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1
HARVARD COLLEGE
*UBRARY*
INMEMOroOF
WAINWRIGHT MERRILL
CLASS OF 1919
BORN AT CmBRinCE M« M898
KIUEDATWBESNOVEMBK&19I7
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i
THE STORY OF
THE RAINBOW DIVISION
THE STORY OF THE
RAINBOW DIVISION
RAYMOND S. TOMPKINS
WITH AN INTBODnCTION BT
MAJOR GENEBAL CHARLES T. MENOHER
OOMMANBEB 07 THB RAINBOW DIVIBION
XHROUOB ALL ITS FIGHTS
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
New York 1919
H V^H-.*^H^^ 10
JAN 16 1923
Copyright, 1919,
By Bonx & I^vERiGHT, Incx
AU rights reaerved
Pnnied in the U. S. A.
vi Foreword
^ chine. Of course, it had a most excellent staff,
which was headed by a most brilliant officer, Gen-
eral MacArthur, and the Division was privi-
I leged to plume itself more or less on its excellent
staff work. Yet I believe these desirable results
;would never have been arrived at without the
name "Rainbow."
It is an interesting fact that on the morning
when the Division left the Baccarat Sector, after
four months of intensive training in trench war-
fare, to be thrown m in the Champagne to assist
in checking this last desperate drive of the Ger-
mans, a most beautiful rainbow appeared directly
over the sector occupied by the Division, Again
on the morning the Division became engaged on
the Ourcq, another beautiful rainbow appeared
directly over the point where contact was first
gained. On at least one other occasion this same
phenomenon appeared.
When on the defensive as in the Champagne,
resisting the desperate attempts of the Germans
to break through, there never was any thought —
it never entered into the calculations, that the
Division might have to retire. In the same way
Foreword vii
when on the offensive, there was never any-
thought except that of going forward.
To have commanded such a body of men
throughout the entire time of its service against
the enemy, of some nine months, was a privilege
indeed.
In this book the story of the Rainbow Divi-
sion has been told accurately, fully and absorb-
ingly. As nearly as it is possible to do so in a
narrative that tells of the experiences of but one
division, "The Story of the Rainbow" tells the
story of America's part in the Great War.
Major-General.
/
CONTENTS
Part One
I. The Rainbow Appears and Goes Over
There 9
II. Valley Forge Again; The First Smell
OF Battle 23
III. The Rainbow's Story begins to be the
Story of the War 28
rV. America's Rainbow Turns the Tide in
Last and Greatest Trench Battle:
The Champagne-Marnb Defensive . 44
V. The Rainbow's First Attack — Across
the Bloody Ourcq 70
VI. And Speaking of Elsie Janis .... 96
VII. With the First American Army in the
Stroll through St. Mihiel . . . 102
VIII. Through the Argonne to Sedan . . . 125
PaH Two
IX. On to Germany 147
X. Belgium Laughs Again 166
XI. So this is Germany 180
XIL "Dm Wacht am Rhein" 190
CONTENTS
Xni. ''The Conquering of the Highroad" . 198
XIV. The Boche Unmasked C17
XV. Castles on the Rhine S28
I. Roster of Rainbow Division Officers at
Camp Mills, in October, 1917 . . 238
II. Roster of Rainbow Division Officers,
Nov. 11, 1918 240
III. Movements, Material Captured, Casual-
ties 244
IV. Citations and Commendations • . . 250
CHAPTER I
THE RAINBOW APPEASJ3 AND GOES OYER THESE
On what day or with what evolutionary proc-
ess the United States actually came to realize
that it was at war may some time become a
matter of much argument.
Nobody, perhaps, will say that the realization
came immediately upon our severance of diplo-
matic relations with Germany. Some people
may declare that it came with the start or the
end of the first Liberty Loan campaign. Some
may hold that it came with the publication of the
first casualty list.
But if the people in twenty-six States of the
Union and the District of Columbia will hark
back to the month of August, 1917, either by
getting out the old newspapers of that month
and hunting through them, or merely by testing
their own recollections, they will come fairly
9
10 The Story of the Rainbow Divkion
close to settling that, getting down to brass tacks
(by which expression men distinguish the actual
doing of a thing from the promise to themselves
or their friends that they are going to do it), the
United States actually got into the Great War
on August 14, 1917.
It was a story in the afternoon newspapers of
that day that did it ; a story saying that a division
of American troops was to be formed from Na-
tional Guard organizations in twenty-six States
and the District of Columbia. It was to be or-
ganized at once for immediate service overseas.
It was to be named "The Rainbow Division/*
The nation was being called to arms I
The names of the twenty-six States were
printed. They were scattered States, not
grouped together in any one section of the coim-
try. They took in every section except New
England. To serve in this combat division men
were coming from as far west as California and
Oregon and as far east as New York and Mary-
land. The Washington correspondents who had
grabbed the story from the War Department
and flashed it red-hot all over the nation had
Bainboto Appears and Goes Over There 11
many glorious words to say about the fact that
America's sons from the north and the soiXth, the
east and the west were at last going to fight side
by side to make the world safe for democracy.
America was sending a *Tlainbow'' of hope to
Europe.
So of course it thrilled the nation. The Na-
tional Guard soldiers were the "home soldiers."
Somebody in every little town belonged to the
State organization. The girls all went to their
dances and they always marched in the Decora-
tion Day and Fourth of July parades and the
armories were the scenes of every community's
biggest "affau-s."
One American division had already gone to
France, but that was a division of "regulars."
The news of their arrival and of General Per-
shing's arrival, hazy, carefully censored news that
it was, also had been thrilling, but the average
American always thought of "regulars" as peo-
ple apart; adventurous, wandering souls who
lived in some sort of "post" out in the Indian
country. They never thought of "regulars" in
connection with "home,"
12 The Story of the Bainboto Dmsion,
But they thought of this news of August 14
in direct connection with "home," and that was
what made the "Rainbow Division" announce-
ment so important to the people who read the
newspapers that day. The United States had
declared war on April 6, but the meaning of war
did not strike home until August 14. That was
the day the birth of the Rainbow Division be-
came news. Its organization actually dated from
August 5, but the secret had been kept for nine
days.
By September 13, it was a husky, fuUy-clothed
youth, waiting at Camp Albert L. Mills on Long
Island, New York, for orders to sail. It had
taken almost a full month to gather it together —
simply to get the twenty-seven thousand men in
one place, to say nothing of clothing them and
equipping them.
Camp Mills was a great tent-covered plain ad-
joining the Mineola Aviation Field. It was a
center of news interest to Americans everywhere,
for it was one of the first great camps where
American soldiers were gathering to go to war.
All the men were volunteers. Many of them
Bainhow Appears and Goes Over There 18
were "rookies"; their uniforms were new and
stiff -looking and they moved around awkwardly.
For there had been hasty recruiting in some of
the States to get the Rainbow together. They
drilled, drilled, drilled — all day and every day,
and though they were the pick of America's Na-
tional Guard they were hounded and harried un-
mercifully by the grizzled drilled sergeants of the
regular army. So the broad drill field was a
small world unto itself — a drilling, sweating,
cursing little world, preparing to fight.
But the Sundays and the holidays were the old
traditional war days of gaiety and merry-making
and sweet successions of leave-taking. Then the
camp streets were thronged with friends and
relatives of the jnen in the Rainbow Division.
In automobiles they came from States fairly
close at hand, and in special trains they poured
in from distant cities. The old cavalry troop that
the home-folks knew had become a military police
outfit, and the old coast artillery company was
now a trench-mortar battery known by some un-
familiar number, but somehow the home-folks
got to the right tents.
14 The Story of the Rainbow Divmon
Being unused to great armies they didn't all
know what a "division" was, and they thought
this one was called "The Rainbow" because there
were so many different colored hat-cords on the
campaign hats. Much as the giving of their own
sons meant to them, the real significance of
"Rainbow Division," when they finally learned
it, made it mean more, somehow; the thought of
a great bow of hope bending over the nation from
coast to coast. It was a well-chosen name, that
"Rainbow."
More than anything else this name made a
wonderfully smooth machine out of the mixed-up
mass of men who represented as many different
American ideals, traditions and temperaments as
they represented American commonwealths and
communities. For instance, there were the old
Fourth Alabama Infantry and the old 69th New
York Infantry. These two regiments had
fought against each other in the Civil War.
They came to Camp Mills to join the Rainbow
— ^the grandsons of the Civil War fighters —
ready to carry on the North and South struggle
where it had ended in the sixties. And they
Rainbow Appears and Croea Over There 15
carried it on. The New York Irishmen and the
Alabama cotton-planters fought each other all
over Camip Mills. Hardly a day passed without
seeing a pitched battle somewhere around the
camp between the men of the, 167th and the
165th.
Yet in every battle the Rainbow fought in the
war, Alabama and New York fought side by
side.
National Guard infantrymen were to be the
machine-gunners and they had come from three
distinct sections of the nation. Four companies
of the old Fourth Pennsylvania regiment made
up the 149th machine-gun battalion, three com-
panies of the Second Wisconsin made up the
160th, and three companies of the Second Geor-
gia were in the 151st. The three field artillery
regiments came from Minnesota, Indiana and
Illinois; the infantry from Ohio, New York,
Iowa and Alabama; the engineers from North
Carolina and California.
And the ammunition train came from Kansas,
fhe supply train from Texas, the signal troops
from Missouri. The military policemen were
16 The Story of the Rainbow Division
from Virginia, the trench mortar battery men
from Maryland, and both these outfits had left
home as coast artillery. Men from New Jersey,
Tennessee, Oklahoma and Michigan were to
drive the Rainbow's ambulances, and men from
the District of Columbia, Nebraska, Oregon and
Colorado were to run the Field Hospitals. The
Division Headquarters Troop was Louisiana
cavalry. The Division Staff officers came from
everywhere in the country.
From every conceivable station and walk of
life, from every heath and every sort of hearth
in the nation they came to Camp Mills, and they
buried every prejudice in an overwhelming love
and loyalty for the name and spirit of "Rain-
bow" as freshmen do for the name and spirit of
their college.
The Secretary of War and later the Vice-
President of the United States reviewed the
division before thousands of spectators. At
nights officers and men were guests at big houses
on Long Island. There were dances and garden-
parties. And all the time quartermasters were
struggling to get the men equipped and shipping
Rainbow Appears and Goes Over There 1%
authorities were struggling to get ships to take
them to France. Time was flying. The war
was going on. The Germans seemed to be not
weakenings but growing stronger.
Toward the middle of October the dances and
garden parties ceased. It became more and more
difficult for the automobile tourists and special-
train travelers to get into Camp Mills. And
finally, on October 18, the Rainbow Division was
gone.
At two o'clock that morning, with no lights
and no sound, the first column, consisting of the
117th Trench Mortar Battery from Maryland,
and the Second Battalion of the 166th Infantry
from Ohio, moved to the train at Garden City,
Long Island, then to the ferry at Long Island
City and then to the docks at Hoboken. The
other elements followed rapidly. By six p. m*
the whole convoy of ships — the Covington, The
President Lincoln, President Grant, Tenadores,
Pastores and Mallory — anchored down the
Hudson.
Next morning land had disappeared, the open
I
18 The Story of the Rainbow Division
sea was all around them, the ships were bound
for France.
Submarines were still rampant at that time.
The strictest caution was necessary. Officers
and men with fresh memories of house-parties
and the stirring music of bands on parade still
ringing in their ears, began to know the hard-
ships of war. In later days many, many thou-
sands of American soldiers lived over again the
life the Rainbow lived on the ocean, but in those
days nobody knew what it was until they had
tried it. Crowded like horses into narrow bunks,
with the plainest of food, in total darkness at
night, denied even the solace of a cigarette ex-
cept by daylight, always having boat drills — ^it
was the Rainbow Division's first test in stern
discipline.
About three days out the President Grant
disappeared. The rumor spread from ship to
ship that she had been torpedoed. She was
carrying a whole infantry regiment, the 168th,
from Iowa. But she had simply developed en-
gine trouble and had gone back to port.
The rest of the voyage was without incident.
Bainbotv Appears a/nd Goes Over There. lfl(
except that at daybreak on the last day of Octo-
ber a wireless message reported a waiting fleet
of submarines at the entrance to the Port of St.
Nazaire, near Bell Isle, The course was changed
and the danger avoided. And about dusk, Octo-
ber 31, with the Tenadores leading and the Presi-
dent Lincoln close behind, the Rainbow Division
entered the port of St. Nazaire.
Rain and a dreary looking mudhole for a town
— ^that was the division's first impression of
France. Some of the townspeople were there
around the wharf to greet the American soldiers.
The debarkation of a convoy of American troops
was not a common occurrence then. Nor had
the S. O. S. (the Service of Supplies) of that
day achieved the eflSciency it achieved later. The
first convoy of the Rainbow Division was just
seven days getting off the boats. It was assem-
bled at Camp No. 1, about two miles outside of
St. Nazaire.
The unfavorable impression of France grew
during the first few days, rather than diminished.
It rained steadily. The mud was ankle deep.
Stores and cafes charged extortionate prices.
EO The Story of the Rainbow DixnsioTk
The collapse in Russia and the Italian reverses
were announced. And America was thousands
of miles away and the war bade fair to last four
years. Then and there most of the Rainbow
Division renounced expectations of ever going
home again. They looked at the future grimly
and with set teeth.
Gradually the division left for training areas.
The Artillery Brigade, made up of Illinois, In-
diana and Minnesota troops, went to Coetquidan
in Brittany, with the Ammunition Train, an all-
Kansas outfit. The Trench Mortar Battery
went to Langres; Division Headquarters and
the Infantry went to the Vaucouleurs area.
Vaucouleurs is in Lorraine, near Toul. It was
from that village Joan of Arc started on her cru-
sade for France. The Rainbow landed there in
box cars after a long ride across the country,
and were less impressed with the historical sig-
nificance of their new billets than with the
manure piles in all the front yards, by the height,
breadth and odor of which French village citizens
proclaim their worldly worth. French money
was a costly puzzle. French verbs eluded them
Bmnbow Appears and Groes Over There. 21
and they had terrible times buying eggs. The
people were always kind, but politely uncertain
of the ability of our untrained troops to stand
against the GJermans. But gradually the divi-
sion adapted itself, novelties of the Old World
became commonplace affairs, and the Rainbow
got down to business.
The training schedule began in earnest. It
was the result of the experience of all the Allies,
brought up to the minute. OflScers and special-
ists in one branch or another of the new warfare
attended schools and the daily drill under the
eyes of French and American instructors in-
cluded artillery, machine-guns, rifles, pistols,
trench-mortars and 37 millimeter-gun target
practice ; bayonet and gas drill, digging trenches,
building shelters and wire entanglements, roads
and bridges ; visual and mechanical signaling and
the art and science of liaison; maneuvers and
terrain problems, disciplinary drill of many sorts,
grenade throwing and marches.
At Vaucouleurs the 165th Infantry — ^the old
69ih New York — and some smaller elements of
the division which had not been in the first con-
22 The Story of the Rainbow Division
voy joined the division. The men who had had
to turn back on the President Grant caught up
about December 12 in what was known as the
LaFuche area, adjoining the Vaucouleurs area.
They had come by way of Liverpool and Brest ;
had seen how strictly the British were regulating
food supplies and had been uproariously wel-
comed in England.
Christmas was drawing near. The Rainbow
had now been almost two months in France.
What would Christmas Day be? What was
coming next and how soon?
They got the answer just before Christmas
Day, spent the jolly festival in packing up and
getting ready to move, and the day after were
on their way to the Rolampont area, about 100
kilometers to the rear, on a hike that no Rainbow
Division man who made it with his two feet will
ever forget.
CHAPTER II
PALLET F0B6E AGAIN; THE FIBST SMELL OF BATTLE
Vaucouleues was not the training area in
which the Rainbow Division belonged; it had
been sent there because the military situation on
the Western Front made necessary desperate
speed in getting the newly arrived Americans
somewhere and getting them there at once. The
area intended for the Rainbow's training period
was the Rolampont area and that was not at
first ready to receive them. It was near the city
of Langres and was known as the Seventh Train-
ing Area. To Rolampont, then about 100 kilo-
meters from Vaucouleurs, the division started on
the day after Christmas.
Always the men of the Rainbow will remem-
ber that march as "The Valley Forge Hike."
The supply system of the American Expedi-
tionary Force was not then what it became in the
23
24 The Story of the Rainbow Division
summer and fall of 1918, when whole corps could
move forward in great attacks and scarcely ever
lack for food and clothing except in the farthest
lines of advance. The Rainbow Division started
the hike to Rolampont with scarcely any shoes
except what the men had on their feet ; there was
no surplus supply to speak of. Some of the men
had no overcoats. And they had barely started
before «a blizzard sprang up.
They count the "Valley Forge Hike" as hav-
ing lasted four days, though the start from Vau-
couleurs was made fourteen days before that.
They were f oiu* days going from Vaucouleurs to
LaFuche, rested there about ten days and then
started for Rolampont. The four days on the
way to Rolanapont was the "Valley Forge" part.
They made most of the hike on sheer grit.
Great drifts piled up under the sweeping winds,
and in some places the snow lay flat three or four
feet deep. The men were not hardened to long
hikes even under fair conditions; they had not
entirely straightened out the kinks of the cramp-
ing ocean trip.
Theu- shoes wore out— men were marching
Valley Forge Again 25
barefooted through the snow sometimes; they
wrapped bags aroimd their feet and kept on.
There were bloody tracks along the route of the
column. At night they pulled up in some little
village and slept — exhausted heaps of half-
frozen men huddling together in barns and hay-
lofts to keep warm. Some of them soaked their
feet in buckets of icy water to draw out the frost.
There was not much automobile transporta-
tion in those first days, either ; only the Division
Commander and the Brigade commanders had
cars. The colonels of the regiments rode mules,
but often one of them dismounted and let an
exhausted man ride while he walked.
The thermometer went below zero. Cases of
mumps and pneumonia developed, and the sup-
ply of ambulances was too small to carry the men
to hospitals as rapidly as they became ill. In one
regiment five himdred men were unable to keep
on.
But with that pride in the name and honor of
"The Rainbow,'^ and with what straining of
nerve force only the men themselves know, the
division came through. The hardships the men
26 The Story of the Rainbow Division
endured during that period drew them together
as nothing else had done ; and though in the string
of battles that came later they faced terrific fire
and fought ahead for days and nights without
food or sleep, not a man who made it will ever
forget the "Valley Forge Hike."
It was just before New Year's Day, 1918,
when they reached the Rolampont area. There
the Rainbow settled down to have its equipment
completed, get the finishing touches to its train-
ing, and await orders to go into the trenches.
General Mann was succeeded here as Division
Commander by Major-General Charles T.
Menoher. As the division thawed out and got
clothes and shoes and fighting equipment, its
confidence grew. The future was shaping up
now, growing plainer; there was fighting ahead,
that was certain, but they wanted to fight. They
were eager to get up there on the line. They
looked around them at this new bit of rural
France with its poor dwellings, its toy-engines
and railroad coaches and its general air of pov-
erty, and thought (expressed it, too), "The Ger-
mans can't be so good or they'd have licked the
Valley Forge Again 27
V French long ago." Later they realized that there
was a deeply valorous spirit behind these out-
ward things of France and odious comparisons
between France's ancient oddities and America's
modem greatness were forgotten in sheer ad-
miration of the fine bravery of France's soldiers.
Then, on February 15, 1918, came the orders
to go to the front. The preliminaries were over.
For the Rainbow the war was about to begin.
On February 16 the division entrained and rolled
northward, toward the Luneville Sector in Lor-
raine. From that direction came the smell of
battle.
CHAPTER III
THE EAINBOW'S STOEY BEGINS TO BE THE 8T0EY
OF THE WAE
It was the day before the birthday of George
Washington that the Rainbow Division finished
detraining within marching distance of the
trenches in the Luneville Sector — about 10 miles
back. The Sixty-seventh Artillery Brigade, Na-
tional Guard artillerymen from Indiana, Illinois
and Minnesota, had finished shooting at targets
around Coetquidan and had caught up.
Luneville was the "quiet sector'* the War De-
partment was telling the people about back
home. Actually there had been no fighting there
since 1914, when the Germans had reached Ram-
bervillers, destroyed the villages and withdravra.
A rolling, wooded, rich coimtry was this part of
Lorraine — altogether too beautiful to be the
scene of battle. And by a sort of tacit agreement
28
The Rainboxv's Story 29
both Gennans and French had been sparing the
villages; neither side used gas, and in the day-
time a shot was seldom heard.
With the arrival of the Rainbow Division
things^changed.
They went into the trenches quietly enough.
The First Division, when it had entered the line
previously in a nearby sector, had aroused the
suspicions of the Germans and brought down on
their own heads a deadly biu-st of fire, and a raid
in which they had lost prisoners. Profiting by
the First's experience the Rainbow sneaked into
position and took up its vigil over No-Man's-
Land in the night without the knowledge of the
Germans and without losing a single man.
But a new foe was facing the Boche in Lor-
raine— ^a youthful, eager foe, confident of his
untried strength and impetuous to use it. And
he knew there were a hundred million people
back home wondering how he would use it and
how he was getting along. So the Germans
were not long without knowledge of the change
in their enemy's order of battle.
It was many weeks later that there went
•0 The Story of the Rainbow Division
abroad the story about the Germans who came
out of their trench to wash some clothes in a
shell-hole in No-Man's-Land, in full sight of
the Americans. It was a true story, and it hap-
pened during the Rainbow Division's first few
days in the trenches, and Alabamians in the 167th
Infantry were the heroes of it.
The Germans had washed clothes in that shell-
hole before and nothing had happened. They
had known that nothing would happen. On their
side the French had peacefully smoked their
pipes in the cool of the evening on the very top
of the trenches. It was simply one of the work-
ings cut of the tacit agreement.
But a little outpost of Alabamians got one
glimpse of this group of Boehe in imdershirts
arrogantly dipping dirty clothes in the water of
No-Man's-Land, and they opened fire. The
Germans scattered like rabbits, some of them
hugging wounds.
A French officer came rushing to the outpost
in a fury of excitement. What did the Ameri-
cans mean? They had done a terrible thingt
k-Now the Germans would be angry and every-
The Rainbow's Story 81
body was in for a period of shelling and gas and
raids I He rebuked the hot-headed Yanks
sternly.
"What the hell?" said one of the men later.
"I came out here to kill these Boche, not to sit
here and watch *em wash clothes."
But there was justice in the French officer's
rebuke. The Rainbow Division was the pupil of
the French Army. Going into the line it had
been divided into small units and brigaded with
four French Divisions of the Seventh French
Corps. This is the way it was divided:
The 165th from New York plus two com-
panies of the 150th Machine-6un Battalion from
Wisconsin were with the 164th French Infantry
Division, with their front line in the Foret de
Parroy. The 166th Infantry from Ohio plus
the other two companies of the 150th Machine-
Gun Battalion were in the St. Clement sector
with the 14th French Division. The 168th In-
fantry from Iowa, 167th from Alabama, and
the 151st Machine-Gun Battalion from Georgia
were in the Baccarat sector with the 128th
French Division. The rest of the Rainbow units
82 The Story of the Raifibow Division
ivere distributed along the front of the Seventh
French Corps, where they could be of most use
and get the most experience.
The irate French officer had been right, too,
in his estimate of the result of the Alabamians'
rashness. The tacit agreement for a kid-glove
war in Lorraine went somewhat to pieces from
that moment. The Germans knew now that new
American troops were just across the way. They
didn*t have to depend upon instinct to prove it.
They could see the men and the uniforms, just
as our men could see the Germans, so close to-
gether were the trenches in some places. It was
enough.
At four o'clock on the morning of March 5
the Boche came over, and the men of the Rain-
bow had their first battle.
For several minutes the German batteries
poured a rain of shells on every trench and every
known position from which the Americans might
fire back. They counter-batteried the artillery;
their 77s cut the protecting barbed-wire to pieces.
They dropped a barrage behind the trenches to
cut off both retreat and reinforcements. They
The R(mb(yaf8 Story 88
were certain that all the green Americans who
did not die of fright would be either killed by
the fire or captured by the picked German
raiders, who now came across behind the barrage
about a hundred strong with ready bayonets.
The Americans were green — ^they were not
veterans and they didn't act like veterans. They
were horribly scared, too. But they were also
at that moment the most alert and desperate
bunch of young lowans in the world.
The spot toward which the raid was directed
was a little group of ruined brick buildings just
north of Badonvillers, known as Le Chamois
Farm. The 168th Infantry was holding it. It
was right at the junction of two valleys, an ideal
place to sneak upon, but a death trap if properly
defended.
What it took to defend it properly the lowans
were all broken out with. Within one minute
after the first alarm they opened up down the
valley with their rifles, the Marylanders cut loose
with trench-mortars, and the Georgians turned
on the machine-guns. It was their first chance
to fire and they were as vivacious about it as
84 The Story of the Bainbotv Divmott
debutantes at a coming-out ball. The field artil-
lery, French and American, joined it. Dumb-
founded and maddened at the resistance, the
Germans tried to rush the trenches, but they got
not even to the first line. Dawn, breaking slowly
through the mist and smoke,^ showed three bodies
in field-gray hanging grotesquely over the torn
wire.
One oflScer and eighteen men of the Rainbow
were killed in this, the first little battle, and
twenty-two woimded. But it was a victory; the
raid had been repulsed. No Man's Land was
strewn with Grerman dead.
The spirit of the Division took a great leap.
It had discovered for itself one of the biggest
truths the war produced — ^that the American
doughboy could lick the Boche. Their French
comrades were likewise enthused and reassured.
The Rainbow's first batch of Croix de Guerres
were awarded for bravery in this brush.
Four days later, March 9, the Rainbow par-
ticipated in a raiding party of its own, assisted
by the French. For four hours American light
and heavy artillery, trench-artillery and machine-
The Bainhow^s Story 85
guns beat upon the German first and second lines,
and at five-thirty p. m. French and American
soldiers went over the top together, destroyed
the German shelters, captured a few prisoners,
and returned with slight losses. Colonel Doug-
las Mac Arthur, the Chief -of -Stafi^, captured one
of these prisoners. He had gone over the top in
a doughboy's uniform and held a Boche up with
his .45. The French gave him the Croix de
Guerre for it.
On March 17, in the woods called Rouge
Bouquet, in the Foret de Parroy, immortalized
in one of the late Sergeant Joyce Kilmer's poems
of the war, two oflBcers and 50 men from the first
battalion of the 165th fought the Germans out of
a strong point and destroyed it. Four New
Yorkers were killed, three wounded, and one re-
ported missing. Twenty Croix de Guerres came
to the 165th for that bit of work. They took the
Grerman trench and held it, the first permanent
gain ever made by American troops in France.
By this time the Rainbow had been holding a
front-line sector for almost a month. It had
earned a rest ; it was ordered to take one. And
86 The Story of the Rainbow Division
it has been suggested since that the title of the
Rainbow Division's story ought to be '^Rests We
Never Got."
From that time on it never had a rest, as other
divisions came to know the term. Rest after rest
ordered for it, but the war always cancelled the
orders. Once, on August 20, it went into inten-
sive training around Bourmont, south of Neuf-
chateau, for ten days, but it didn't rest.
And here, coming out of the Luneville sector
on March 20 and being concentrated by March
28 near Gerbervillers, about 15 miles behind the
line, prepared to march leisurely back to Rolam-
pont, it got orders to stop.
The great German oflfensive of March 21 had
begun. For two days every GJerman gun from
the North Sea to the Swiss border had fired
steadily on towns, roads, batteries, posts of com-
mand. Then had come the news of the German
break-through before Amiens.
The Rainbow Division turned around and
marched back to the front, and from that mo-
ment its history is the history of the war.
To begin with, it figured in the complete
The Rcdnhow's Story 87
change of the Allies' military policy. The men-
ace to Amiens had produced Marshal Foch as
Supreme Allied Commander. General Pershing
had made his historic offer to Marshal Foch —
the use of the whole American Army to handle
as he wished. All previous plans were dropped,
and in order to release the 128th French Division
to go to the Somme, the Rainbow was ordered to
take over the Baccarat Sector. Thus came to
the Rainbow the honor of being the first Ameri-
can division to occupy a divisional sector all its
own, under its own commander. Command of
the Baccarat sector passed to Major-General
Menoher on March 81.
All through April there were raids and pa-
trols^ but nothing unusual happened. The Ger-
mans were not trying to break through here;
their effort was concentrated much further to
the north and west, and the Rainbow Division,
with a month of trench vigil already to its credit,
was content to take what rest it could. The
weather grew warm and simny, the military out-
look on the Somme improved, the men began to
feel at home in the trenches.
38 The Story of the Rainbow Division
They busied themselves improving all the de-
fensive works of the sector, ;and completing their
training. Every man was given an opportmiity
to become proficient in his own fighting specialty,
whether that was stringing telephone wires, dig-
ging trenches, sniping, hauling ammimition, ob-
serving artillery fire, dr cooking army rations.
Gradually the Rainbow Division began to find
itself; slowly, with the budding of spring, it be-
gan to "feel its oats," and by the beginning of
May it passed that famous point where it "could
be pushed just so fur and no fu'ther," Fights
just burst right out of it.
There was a beautiful little forest called the
Bois de Chiens near Ancerviller. It was full of
Boche. They had made an apparently impreg-
nable position of it, filling it with networks of
wire and concrete trenches and blockhouses con-
cealing minewerf er, machine-guns and the deadly
77's. The whole thing was covered with dense
forest and commanded the open level ground on
three sides.
Into this stronghold, on May 2, French and
American artillery poured a destructive fire.
The Rambotxfs Story 99
which continued until dusk of the next day. At
that time the Third Battalion of the 166th In-
fantry, lUQ Ohio regiment, penetrated the entire
salient under command of Major Henderson,
with virtually no losses. A "go-and-come raid,"
they called it. The raiders found the Forest of
Oaks completely destroyed. Its trenches were
filled, aU works above ground leveled, wire en-
tirely torn down, and the forest itself turned into
almost a bare field.
Two mornings later. May 5, Lieut. Cassidy
of the 165th led a party over and sneaked around
behind a German outpost at Hameau d'Ancer-
viller. They jumped on the Grermans, killed two
and captured four. Sergeant O'Leary made one
resisting Grerman his own special prize. Whil^
O'Leary was killing him with a trench-knife,
Lieut. Cassidy held up two others with his pistol.
They brought the prisoners back across No-
Man's-Land under heavy machine-gun fire.
Lieut. Cassidy was made a captain before the
war ended, and was twice wounded. Sergeant
O'Leary was kiUed in battle on the Ourcq.
Three Alabama snipers brought on another
40 The Story of the Rainbow Division
mixed fight on May 12, when they went out in
broad daylight to see if their new camouflage
suits would camouflage. They lay in front of a
dugout and when Germans began filing out they
began firing as fast as they could load and pull.
Almost immediately the Germans came rushing
out in such great numbers that the Alabamians
would have been overwhelmed if they hadn't
started a retreat. Two got back safely ; the third
was missing.
"Let's go get him I" said the Southerners, so a
party of about a dozen went over the top. They
found No-Man's-Land full of Germans waiting
for them in the tall grass. Greatly outnumbered,
the Alabamians exchanged shots with them for a
few minutes, and more Germans came out, until
there were more than a hundred. So the rescue
party, too, retreated, while one man with an auto-
matic rifle lay in a shell-hole holding the GJer-
mans back from the chase with a steady stream
of bullets. And when the Alabamians got into
their own trenches, instead of one man missing,
there were two. The automatic rifleman hadn't
come back.
The Ramb(yafs Story 41
Two snipers' private little hunting party bade
fair now to become a pitched battle. The blood
of the Alabama mountain men was up. Lieut.
Breeding, who, they say, was a full-blooded
Indian, gathered nearly a whole platoon and
went out to wipe the Boches up, and bring back
both the Americans. Now crawling, now dash-
ing forward, whooping and yelling as they came,
Breeding's men fell upon the Germans and
routed them. Whenever they could they used
the bayonet, and they killed seven Germans and
wounded many more, without a single casualty
to themselves.
And they brought back the automatic rifle-
man, but the missing sniper they never found.
In his place they brought one dead German,
whom they hung over the wire as a challenge,
guarding him constantly until the division came
out leaving him there — a skeleton in rotted,
bullet-torn field gray.
Thus the Rainbow again took the "quiet" out
of the "quiet sector." The Germans retaliated
with deluges of gas and with raids. On the night
of May 26-27, they launched a projector attack
42 The Story of the Rainbow Divmon
on the Village Negre, northeast of Badonviller.
Seven hundred gas-shells of large caliber de-
scended all at once and without warning upon
the Rainbow along a front of about four hundred
meters. It caught the Iowa infantry by surprise
and the high concentration of deadly gas killed
and disabled two hundred and fifty-one officers
and men. Simultaneously the Boches laid down
an artillery barrage and attempted to raid the
trenches, but were repulsed.
Two nights later they tried the same thing,
but this time the Rainbow was ready. It had
improved its gas discipline and its losses were
only fifty-three officers and men.
Then came rumors of a great Grerman ofi^en-
sive in Lorraine. The bivouac of a battalion of
storm troops was discovered on the Rainbow's
front and promptly destroyed by artillery. De-
fensive works were strengthened and every night
the entire command prepared to receive the at-
tack, determind to beat it back. But it never
came.
Another relief order arrived. Again the Rain-
bow Division's thoughts were directed backward
The Rainbow's Story 48
toward the quiet rest area, where it could browse
around peacefully for a few weeks and sleep at
ni^t and get cleaned up.
The order was received at division headquar-
ters at Baccarat on June 19. By June 21 the
Rainbow was out of the trenches, leaving the 61st
French Division and the 77th American National
Army Division from New York to hold the Bac-
carat sector, and it was concentrated between
Rambervillers and Charmes, ready to start again
for Rolampont. It had been holding the line for
three full months, and that record for continuous
duty was neither broken nor approached by any
other American division throughout the war. At
last (thought everybody) the long-deferred rest
was in sight. That, to repeat, was June 21.
On June 11 the Rainbow Division was entrain-
ing, not fo? Rolampont, but for another part of
the front. The blood-red pen of war history was
moving too fast for American soldiers to rest*
CHAPTER IVj
America's rainbow turns the tide in last and
greatest trench battle: the cham-
pagne-marne defensive
He was a dirty, unshaven German sergeant
and he stood pale and nerve-shaken before a
French intelligence oflBcer in a candle-lighted
dugout deep in the chalk-white soil of the Cham-
pagne country. It was like shimmering gray silk
now, though — that soil — for night had come, the
night of July 14, 1918, and the plains were
bathed in warm moonlight and the clear sky
studded with stars.
A little French raiding party had brought him
in; one of those fearless patrols of veteran poilus,
wary as deer, cunning as panthers, who stole in
and snatched and were away with their quarry
in the twitch of a trigger-finger. A picked pa-
trol it was on this night — ^picked from the best
44
Americans Rmnbaco Turns the Tide 45
becanse its missicm must not f aO. The German
attack was at hand. Gk)uraud had said it and
Gouraud knew. He had felt before the first of
July that it was coming; by the fifth he had
known it for a certainty. And the fourteenth
was Fr^ich Independence Day and Gouraud
knew the German logic.
"They will all be drunk," so the one-armed
French hero of the Dardanelles and commander
of the Fourth French Army guessed the German
estimate of France's readiness. "They will all be
drunk with celebrating and we will kill them
where they lie.*'
Surprise, complete unreadiness — that was the
German's desperate hope; their highest card —
and their last. General Gouraud's troops in the
Champagne before Chalons-sur-Marne could ex-
pect to drink deep to Bastille Day with perfect
safety, for a German attack there, they might
well think, would be madness. The opposing
lines had been virtually stationary there since
1014. Before Chalons from the Argonne to
Rheims the Allies' trench systems were five miles
deep, with great dugouts and vast wire fields. It
46 The Story of the Rainbow Divirion
was perhaps the most perfectly organized defen-
sive position on the whole western front. Yes
(thought von Hindenburg), the French will ex-
pect to be safe there on the fourteenth of July^
1918 — safe and drunk I
They had fafled at Chateau-Thierry. The
Marne salient to that point did not afford ma-
neuver room for another major (merman offen-
sive. Wave after wave of smashing attack the
Hun had hurled against Verdim on the rig^t and
Bheims on the left and they had all been futile.
They had tried to widen on their right in the di-
rection of Compiegne and Montdidier, but there
the Allied armies were known to have concen-
trated their reserves. What, then, beside these
things and the probability of surprise, moved the
German high command to plan a drive on Cha-
lons throu^ five miles of defenses ?
This: that their lines of communication were
shorter and superior; that they could operate on
a straight line while the Allied reserves could
come from north of Paris to Chalons only around
the Marne salient via Vitry-le-Fran9ois, and that
Chalons once taken, a jumping-off point for the
<il
€€'
^America's Rainbow Turns the Tide 47
next drive on Paris could be chosen at will. But
above idl, surprise.
The candles in the dugout flickered with the
vital intensity of the moment it seemed, but prob-
ably it was only with the throb of a gun begin-
ning the ordinary night harassing. The intelli-
gence officer put his question bluntly, almost
carelessly. When, tie wanted to know, would
this attack come?
Tonight," said the German sergeant.
'Eh bien — and at what hour would the bar-
rage begin?*'
"At twelve o'clock," the German sergeant an-
swered. They took him off toward Chalons to a
prison pen to paint "P. G." on his back. And
the intelligence officer whispered over the wires
a word and a number— "Fran9ois, one-four-0 !"
Men in deep holes in the ground throughout miles
of the Champagne's chalky desert caught it up
and passed it on — "Fran9ois, one-four-0" — and
it went out, farther and farther toward the Ger-
man lines, and stopped where the things it her-
alded would begin — in the dugouts of the French
sacrifice companies.
48 The Story of the Rainborv Division
There was nothing now between those com-
panies and death but a few hours' sleep and a
few minutes of hand-to-hand fighting. It was
the code-signal that the night of the Grerman
attack had come.
In five minutes (and it was then but a little
after dark) the whole Fourth French Army
knew it and was ready, Americans and all.
And the whole Fourth French Army heard
again Gouraud's call of the week before : "None
will look behind ; none will give way. Kill them ;
kill them in abundance until they have had
enou^.*'
The Americans were the men of the Rainbow
Division. Coming out of the Baccarat sector on
June 21, "for a rest/' they had instead moved by
rail to Camp de Chalons with headquarters at
Vadenay Farm in the Champagne area, for spe-
cial training. They had landed there June 29,
and were about to carry out a minor operation
near Chatillon-sur-Marne when Marshal Foch,
learning of the German plan against Chalons,
again availed himself of General Pershing's of-
fer, and looked about for one high-spirited, hard-
■America's Rainbow Turns the Tide 49
fighting American Division, By the first of July
the Rainbow, a five-months-old American war-
baby, was a part — the only American part — of
Grouraud's plan of defense. By the tenth it and
all the French divisions with it were in their
places before Chalons.
It was a novel plan of defense; elastic is the
one word that best describes it. It was the great-
est and most successful of plans for the defense
of an old-time trench system ; for as this proved
to be the last of the great trendi battles of the
war, so also was it the fiercest and most decisive.
The most threatening advance on Paris had been
stopped earlier in the summer but that Allied
success had not broken the German power of
large-scale ofi'ensives,
Gk)uraud had abandoned his first-line system
and turned it into a mass of death traps. No
soldiers were there except the handful of French
men in sacrifice companies prepared to face cer-
tain death for the sake of keeping the Germans
fooled into believing that the signal flares and
rockets they sent up by night and their own vis-
ible movements by day meant that the first line
50 The Story of the Rainbow I)ividon
was full of troops. Armed with machine guns,
they were to wait there, first in deep dugouts
while the bombardment went on, then in the midst
of labyrinths of wire so thick that they could not
get out and no one else could get in, and they
Were to delay the German advance and separate
the German infantry from the G^erman barrage,
until overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers.
At sunset the evening before the attack they
Were pitching horseshoes inside their barbed-wire
backyards.
So all the German bombardment on the first
lines by trench-artillery and minenwerfer would
be time, labor and ammunition wasted.
For his first real infantry defense Gouraud
had moved his troops back to the intermediate
line, about three miles from the German posi-
tions. On the extreme left, just south of Au-
berive-sur-Suippes, were the third and second
battalions of the 165th Infantry, all New York-
ers, and the third battalion, 166th, from Ohio, and
on the extreme right, northeast of Souain, were
Alabamians of the second battalion, 167th In-
fantry, and lowans of the second battalion, 168th
America's Bazriboto Turns the Tide 51
Infantry. Eetween the Alabamians and the
New Yorkers ran the ancient Roman road to
Chalons-sur-Mame. They were the guardians
of the pass.
In the second line from left to right five miles
from the German positions were the 117th Engi-
neers from California and South Carolina ready
to fight as infantry; first battalion, 165th Infan-
try; first and second battalions, 166th Infantry;
first and third battalions, 167th Infantry, and
first and third battalions, 168th Infantry. Min-
gled with them were French soldiers of the 170th
Division on the left and the 13th Division on the
right. The Rainbow had been brigaded with
two French Infantry Divisions.
The Rainbow artillery was likewise brigaded
with the French, Col. Leach with the 151st Field
Artillery from Minnesota being on the right in
support of the second position, and Col. Riley
with the 149th from Illinois on the left. Of the
150th artillery regiment from Indiana under Col.
Tyndall, one battalion was on the right and two
on the left.
The farthest advanced American unit in the
52 The Story of the Rainbow Division
battle system was the 117th Trench-Mortar Bat-
tery from Maryland. It was out beyond the m-
termediate line on the right, charged with the
duty of delaying the German advance with show-
ers of bombs.
Back of the second line were shelters filled to
bursting with animals and transportation, and
around and behind them was artillery of aU caU-
bers with great heaps of ammunition. The gun-
ners were sleeping by the guns. Still farther
back were ammunition and supply dumps, hos-
pitals (a big one at Bussy-le-Chateau), and at
Vadenay Farm was Headquarters of the Rain-
bow Division, with General Menoher in com-
mand and Col. MacArthur chief of staflp. Be-
hind all these, twenty miles away from the Ger-
man lines — ^the prize the Hun sought on this
clear, warm, moonlight night of July 14, 1918 —
stood the city of Chalons-sur-Marne, a black blot
on the ghost-gray plains of the Champagne,
lightless and silent.
Silent but for the occasional boom of a gun
and crash of a shell, now behind the German
lines, now behind the Allied lines. Just an ordi-
America's Rainbow Turns the Tide 58
nary night; harassing fire to keep them stirred
up around the batteries and dumps and picket
lines so that they'd know you were still there and
still living. Here and there an occasional rifle-
shot. Now and then a rocket like the Earth
throwing a fiery kiss to the Moon. No aero-
planes, no bombs falling; just soft moonlight,
gentle breezes and the faint throb of cannon, like
the War-god breathing spasmodically in his
sleep.
Greneral Gouraud began his barrage at eleven
o'clock. Until November 1, during the Argonne-
Meuse ofi'ensive, that chorus of guns held the
Allied record for volume of sound and devastat-
ing efi^ect. It was timed to coincide with the
probable massing of the German armies for the
attack, or at least with the manning of the Ger-
man artillery for the preliminary bombardment.
It paled the clear light of the moon ; where the
guns were the horizon was red as sunset with
their muzzle flashes — over the German lines and
rear areas the sky flamed with shell explosions.
The Rainbow men with nothing in their war ex-
perience except the desultory cannonading of the
54 The Story of the Rainbow DixHnon
Baccarat sector came out of dugouts and ele-
phant-backs to watch the spectacle. When they
shouted to one another, "Great sight, ain't it?"
they had to shout through cupped hands directly
in a comrade's ear.
They stood there feeling a little sorry for the
enemy who had to endure such punishment; but
exultant to think in what a terrible mess his plans
for the night's work must be — ^artillery smashed
before it could get under way, storm troops de-
moralized, ammunition dumps going up. And
while they thought these things the world went
suddenly mad beneath their feet and hideous
death ran rampant over every foot of groimd.
Midnight had come an hour earlier to the Ger-
mans than it had to the Allies. They had for-
gotten that, some of them. And some of them
recalled it too late. It was five minutes past
twelve.
On a front of forty-two miles the German
barrage fell like a blanket. Like an avalanche
it swept upon the Allied positions and enveloped
them all everywhere and at once. It was not a
fugue chorus with one gun beginning and others
America's Bainbom Turns the Tide 55
OQmmg in a few at a time; one wire or one button
seemed to have started them all.
For most of the soldiers at their dugout doors
watching their own barrage with pleasurable awe
there was but one move possible — a dive like a
"slide to second/' into the nearest hole in the
ground. And not even that always saved them.
There was death and destruction in the very air;
it seemed to be reaching out with hungry, clutch-
ing hands, sweeping victims in; the sky swished
and swirled like a hurricane, bringing a rain thai
burst with a red crash when it landed, and the
dean night breeze became a deadly draft of poi-
sonous gas.
It dwarfed the French- American barrage in
sound; swallowed it up like a shark swallowing
a sea-bass. For years to come Americans who
lived under it will shake their heads and fail for
words when you talk of the first part of that
night in the Champagne. Only the first Ger-
man offensive on the Somme in 1918 rivaled that
bombardment; the attack on Verdun in IQIG^
compared to it, was mere harassing.
It continued without abatement until four
56 The Story of the Rainbow Divmon
o'clock in the morning. Then it seemed to lift f oiv
a moment, to lessen in violence. The German in«r
fantry was coming, six first-class divisions
strong, in the first assault ; a Guard Cavalry Di-
vision, the Second Bavarian Division, the 88th,
the First, the Seventh and the First Bavarians.
They had just come up after two weeks' rest^
previous to which they had held this same sector
and studied every foot of the ground. Of the
six, one was attacking the left where the New
Yorkers and Ohioans were ; three were attacking
the center held entirely hy the French, and two
were on the right to drive back the Alabamians
and lowans.
They were the pick of General von Einem's
Third Army and for all the demoralizing effect
of the Allied fire, which had started before
theirs and continued with scarcely lessened vigor,
they came on across No-Man's-Land in superb
form. They were Prussians, most of them, and
it was a Prussian boast that no troops could at-
tack in such close formation as theirs.
But the Allied front line was deserted. Eager
to come to a stan^-up fight, the Germans kept
Amtrica's Rainbow Turns the Tide 57
on and on, and found nobody to fight; nothing
but mines that roared up beneath their feet, and
thick gas clouds and shells tearing great holes in
their ranks. And in little torn forests of wire the
men of the French sacrifice companies now came
out of their holes like small swarms of angry bees
and stung them with bursts of machine-gun fire.
And now, too, Gouraud called another bit of
strategy into play; orders to fire came to gun-
ners who had been out of range of the German
artillery when the bombardment had started,
but who were now within range of the advancing
German infantry. Direct hits from high explo-
sive shells began piling into the German attack-
ers. But still they kept on, thousands more
climbing over heaps of bodies to fill the gaps.
And finally, by sheer disregard of losses, they
came to the intermediate line — ^the Allies' first
real line of defense.
It may never be accurately known whether the
Germans reached the left or the right of the line
first, and it makes little diif erence since they
gained no more at one side than they did at the
other. But it is fairly certain that they came in
58 The Story of the Rainbo'iv Division
greater force at the right because just in front
of the Alabamians and lowans were the splin-
tered tree-trunks of what had been a small forest,
offering protection of a sort to the advance on
that wing. Trouble had been expected there.
The second battalion of the 167th had had no
shelter during the German bombardment except
what the trenches afforded, which was almost no
shelter at all. But the men had been spread out
thinly, and shells when they were direct hits on
the parapets did a minimum of damage. Morale,
sky-high before midnight with Gouraud's stir-
ring words and the sense of the greatness of it
all, had slumped a bit under the terrible German
fire, but now that that was over it mounted again
with a leap. The *'Wild Men from Alabama'*
were ready.
They were in f om* companies, G and H on the
right of the Chalons road, commanded by Cap-
tain Thomas F. Goerg and Captain Herman W.
Thompson, and E and F on the left of the road
commanded by Lieutenant Raymond R. Brown
and Captain Frederick L. Wyatt. The com-
mander of the Second Battalion was Captain
'Americans Rainbow Turns the Tide iSk
Everett H. Jackson. The position took in the
crests of two gentle slopes with a little valley
between, and the slopes were strewn with ol^
tree-stumps and scrubby little pines.
Some man in G Company saw the Germans
first; he had crawled up to watch them coming
and he saw one particular Boche before he saw]
the others. He was a monstrous big fellow,
walking almost upright. "Good Gawdl'*
chuckled the Alabama man. "Look at the size o*
that guy, will you? Ah'm gon' to get him righf
nowr
He did, and when his rifle cracked the Ameri-
cans opened up all along the right of the line.
AH the Germans who could dropped into com-
municating trenches and continued sneaking for-
ward under cover. From then on no American
in that part of the fight remembers very clearly
what happened, except in his own particular
little patch of ground. Then and there the Bat-
tle of the Champagne became a rough-and-
tumble fight with bare knives — ^man against man;
with knives, fists, teeth and rifle-butts.
The Germans, expecting, as orders on cap^
fiO The Story^ of the Rainbow Division
tured prisoners showed, to reach the town of
Suippes by noon of July 15, and Chalons by four
o'clock of the next day, ran into^a stabbing affray
jwlthin the first few minutes. That is what it was
in the Alabama trenches — a tremendous stabbing
affray, with men cutting and slashing and jab-
bing at each other; with no time to gloat or to be
isorry over a victim or to rest, because there was
inore killing to do. In the Baccarat sector the
il67th had started a reputation for wild, unrea-
jsoning courage ; in the Battle of the Champagne
Jhey completed it.
In one of those faded little field-messages,
Scribbled with a stub of hard pencil with scarcely
any point, Capt. Julien M. Strassberger, com-
pianding the 167th's machine-gun company, sup-
porting Companies E and F, wrote at eight-
Jhirty a.m., and sent it to the Battalion Com-
mander.
"Boche dead piled aroimd here sky-high. lis
^ passeront pasr
But the fate of the right of the line began to
liang in the balance. German tanks had been
;able to get up here and the Allied artillery was
^America's Rainbow Turns the Tide 61
not having tiie destructive effect that it had in
the center and on the left. The Maryland
Trench-Mortar Battery, manning their little
guns out there on ground the Boche was now
crossing, had fired seven hundred and fifty bomhs
during the morning, scoring direct hits on four
tanks and putting them out of action. Seven
more tanks had crawled through and were lum-
bering down the valley between the two slopes.
The 37 millimeter guns of the 167th put them
all out of action.
Machine-guns were spraying the G^rmans^
hand-grenades bursting in groups of them, rifles
were spitting at them from the parapets, but still
they came on. And when the peril of the right
wing seemed very real and the Germans were
piling to the top of the ridge faster than they
were dying, the Alabamians made the first
counter-attack.
No more splendid exhibition of reckless, in-
domitable courage was produced in the whole war
than this counter-attack on the proud Prussian
troops by the Americans from the sunny South-
land. No Americans had ever done it before. ,
.62 The, Story of the Rainbow Division
The Alabamians went in by platoons, winding
through the trenches, crawling over heaps of dead
French, Americans and Germans, and labyrinths
of tangled wire, into the melee. Of the first
platoon none ever came back. By the time a
company of French reinforcements arrived with
orders to retake two lost positions, Lieut. Hoxie
Fairchild, with an E Company platoon, had
already retaken them. The French, with another
platoon under Lieut. M. L. Marklin, retook a
third.
Thus they were still fighting while the sun
rose high and the air grew warm and the day
advanced, and the first shock of the last German
offensive had fallen on men who would not yield
an inch.
And what, throughout all this, of the left of
the line where the old 69th New York— "The
Fighting Harps" — and the old guardsmen from
Ohio were holding on?
The third Battalion of the 165th under Major
]^illiam (Wild Bill) Donovan (later Lieuten-
ant-Colonel), and the Second Battalion, under
[Americans Rainbow Turns the Tide 8S
Major Alexander Anderson, were over fher6
fighting like wild-cats.
Standing right heside Lieut. Thomas M.
lYoung as the Grermans came on, a man had
been killed. Prohably it was Sergeant Tom
O'Rourke ; he was one of the first New Yorkers
killed in that fight. At any rate Lieut. Yoimg
saw the Grerman who had killed him — a sniper- —
and within a few minutes Young had killed the
Grerman. He was elated. "Boys, I got my first
Grerman!'^ he shouted, and the next second a
grenade killed him, and the Boche were up to
the wire. By noon they had gained a foothold
seven times in the New Yorkers* trenches and
seven times had heen hurled out. That evening
at six o'clock they tried it again and were beaten
off.
All night bombs and shells fell on the fighting
lines and rear areas ; steady showers of them on
hospitals, towns and roads. There was no rest
from them, especially the bombs. By day the
sky was literally dark with German aeroplanes;
every French plane had been chased away.
The Grerman aviators would hover above the
64 The Story of the Rainbow Division
trenches like hawts circling to pounce on chick-
ens, then swooping low, cut loose with machine-
guns and showers of steel darts upon the heads
of the infantry. Carrying parties with ammuni-
tion had to dodge these planes as they would
swarms of bees. Stretcher-bearers carrying
wounded men through trenches and along roads
were shot down by low-flying aviators.
At six o'clock on the morning of July 16 the
Germans attacked again on the left, and after
they had been driven off for the fifth time the
men of G Company, commanded by Capt. John
T. Prout, were too mad to stand still. Where-
upon the second splendid, wild American charge
was made, as worthy of immortality as the
counter-attack of the Alabamians on the first
day.
The enemy was taking cover from American
rifle fire when Lieut. Kenneth C. Ogle of G Com-
pany gathered his platoon and prepared to go
over the top as soon as the Boche came out of
hiding. So that when they were coming toward
the old 69th's trenches for the sixth time that
'Americans Bcdnbow Turns the Tide 65
morning they found before them not the blazing
muzzles of rifles, but thirty-eight wild sons of
Erin, yelling and rushing at them with long, bare
bayonets.
The Gtermans tiu-ned and fled, but the Ameri-
cans had the better start, and they caught and
bayonetted twenty-two without a single casualty
to themselves. With such success they couldn't
turn back, so they kept on to the old French posi-
tion now held by the Germans, but were held off
by superior machine-gun fire. On their way back
they killed off a party of Germans creeping up
an old boyau, and threw grenades into a dugout,
killing fourteen more.
Lieut. EUet of E Company, conmianded by
Capt. Charles D. Baker, counter-attacked with
his platoon imder orders from the French that
were received at 6 :05, telling him to attack at six
o'clock. Ellet attacked immediately, despite the
possibility of heavy casualties through the mix-up
in time, and not only retook the lost position but
captured twelve prisoners, including an ofiicer.
Ellet was kiUed in the Argonne fight.
The rest of that day the Germans spent in
166 The Story^ of the Rdnhow Division
desperate attempts to break through by ruses and
tricks. A bunch of them ran up dressed in
French uniforms (they had taken them from the
dead out there in the sacrifice companies), and
got close enough. to throw grenades at a gun-
crew of the 150th Machine-Gun Battalion, kill-
ing two Wisconsin gunners, and putting the gun
out of action. Another Wisconsin man, mor-
tally wounded but still at his gun, drove them
away, and died firing. Later forty Germans
came up yelling "Kamerad!" with upraised
hands. The Americans fired on them at once,
and when the Germans fell, grenades wrapped
in handkerchiefs fell from their hands. Still
later a German in a French uniform came run-
ing toward the lines with four others chasing him.
Om* men were not deceived and shot them all
down.
On the night of July 16 the Germans gave up
hope, and the hand-to-hand fighting ceased. The
Allied line in the Champagne, though it had bent
in and out during the two days' battle, was re-
established with not a foot of ground lost; the
German offensive had crumpled in the early
America's Rainbow Turns the Tide 67
hours of the first day. The decisive battle of the
war had been won.
Now the Hun became spiteful. Raging in
defeat he shelled the rear areas as far back as
Chalons, and sprinkled the earth with bombs
from the sky. Back there where the ammunition
and supplies had come from and where the
wounded had been carried, the scene was inde-
scribable. Dead horses lay everywhere — ^simply
spattered about the landscape. The big Ameri-
can hospital at Bussy-le-Chateau had been
wrecked by bombs — several wards full of
woimded soldiers destroyed and the men killed.
Roads were obliterated for miles ; a blight seemed
to have descended on trees and vegetation; every-
where within a radius of twenty miles the earth
was torn and tortured. But the line had held ; the
bodies of Americans of the Rainbow had barred
the road to Chalons ; and some were in huddled,
shapeless heaps in the trenches and some were
wiping off their bayonets and crying.
» ^^
Grouraud talked to them on the 19th (the Rain-
bow had been relieved the day before by Moroc-
can troops) . In a little field near Army Head-
68 The Story of the Rainbow Division
quarters, the French General stood and reviewed
a battalion of the 166th Infantry from Ohio,
whose men had fought with the New Yorkers on
the left. His empty left sleeve was in the pocket
of his tunic ; tall and erect like a story-book hero,
he moved with a limp — ^he had a shattered hip —
and his eyes burned like live coals.
With his good arm behind his back he stood
before what assemblage of Rainbow officers it
had been possible to gather and thanked them,
and through them, the men. It was a strange
assemblage; scrubby-chinned men, dirty and
torn, half -blind and half -choked still with gas,
muscles and nerves still quivering with the long
fight; and staff officers whose painful attempts
at polishing up for the occasion were obvious and
soldierly.
He said few words, did Gom-aud, but they
were deep words. They said the Rainbow Divi-
sion had put a new spirit into France; that be-
fore the battle their mere presence had been a
tonic ; that their resistance during the battle was
like a promise of new life. And he announced
for the first time the successful launching of an
Americas Rainbow Turns the Tide 69
allied offensive between Soissons and Chateau*
Thierry.
Officers who had not slept for days — covered
with the dirt and blood of the trenches — shouted
with joy. Camps of men just out of the jaws of
death rang with laughter and song. The tide of
war had turned. The French celebrated their
Fourteenth of July on July 19, and champagne
ran like water.
But they say that Sergeant Lawrence Quigley,
a Minneapolis man in D Battery, 151st Minne-
sota Artillery, had no part in the rejoicing. His
gun — ^his beautiful gun, "Mary Ann'' — ^that he
had been firing steadily for seventy-two hours,
had gone out of commission during the last few
minutes, and he was weepmg like a baby.
CHAPTER Vi
THE rainbow's FIBST ATTACK — ^ACBOSS THE
BLOODY OUECQ
Paris was alive with the two great pieces of
news of that decisive month of July, 1918 — ^the
successful defense before Chalons and the Allied
advance before Soissons. The Rainbow Divi-
sion, defenders of the Champagne, tasted swiftly
of the rewards of heroes as they rolled through
Noisy-le-sec, and passed on to more fighting.
Coming by rail from Chalons where long-
range artillery reached hungrily even after the
moving train, the Division, in order to come to
La-Ferte-sous-Jouarre, had to go close to Paris,
for the Germans were in Chateau-Thierry.
Noisy-le-sec is a suburb of Paris. /The long
trains that carried the Rainbow rolled through
there between July 21 and 24. It was a beauti-
ful day — warm and mellow — and wherever they
70
The Rainbow's First Attack 71
could find holds for hands and feet, the men dung
to open flat-cars, taking the air. Bridges across
the railroad yards were crowded with Parisians,
mostly women and girls. For nearly four years
they had had no chance to celebrate a victory,
but now they had one, and here, within sound of
their voices, were the Americans who had stopped
\he Grcrmans in the Champagne.
They thctered wildly and threw kisses and
flowers at the men in olive-drab. The men
cheered back ; their spirits had returned, they had
seen the worst of war; there was nothing they
could not tackle now. It was good to be alive
on this warm July morning with Paris cheering
you as a conquering hero. This was the "sort
of stuff you read about.^'
It was thus the Rainbow Division went toward
the Aisne-Marne Ofi^ensive for what was to be
the bloodiest battle of the outfit's history. For
at this stage of the war it was "Push while the
pushing is good," and no division of soldiers with
such reputations as the Rainbow for steadfast-
ness and valor could be permitted to rest while
there were such possibilities of getting the Boche
72 The Story of the Rainbow Division
on the run, not even when that division had heen
in actual comhat without rest since midwinter.
On July 24-25 it was moving by camion from
La-Ferte-sous- Jouarre to the vicinity of !£pieds.
The general situation around the beautiful
Marne valley, which the men of the Rainbow
were now seeing for the first time, was this:
When the Germans had broken through in
May and June they had been finally stopped
at the Mame. Their gains from Rheims to
Chateau-Thierry and to Soissons made a salient
reaching out and threatening Paris. The Gter-
man offensive of July 15, that the Rainbow had
just helped to stop, had extended down the east
side of this salient to Chateau-Thierry. Down
there the American Third Division, supported
by the 28th — ^Pennsylvania National Guards-
men— ^had opposed a crossing east of Chateau-
Thierry and confined the Boche to a gain of a
few miles near Fossoy.
And now, with that drive definitely halted^
Marshal Foch, on July 18, had opened an attack
on both sides and at the point of the Chateau-
SThierry salient. The Germans had gotten them-
The Rainbow's First Attack 73
selves into a pocket; they had tried to broaden
it and deepen it and failed. The Day of the
Allies had come.
The First and Second American Divisions had
made a surprise attack south of Soissons. The
Fourth Division had exerted some pressure on
the western side near Lizy. The enemy recrossed
the River Marne before he was attacked by the
Fourth Division, which followed him for eight
kilometers, side by side with the 26th (Yankee)
Division. The 26th made the pivotal attack
north of Chateau-Thierry. The rest of the at-
tacking troops were French, with a few British
divisions south of and close to Rheims.
It is likely that after the reverse of July 15 in
the Champagne, Ludendorff realized that the
Chateau-Thierry salient was a menace to his
army. But Foch had realized it quicker than he ;
vast quantities of stores had piled up in there for
use in the advance on Paris, and they could not
be removed and the salient evacuated before the
Allies were upon him.
As the pocket shrunk under Foch's pressure
the fronts of the fighting forces narrowed ; it be-
74 The Story of the Rainbow Division
came practicable to take out of the line divisions
that had been leading the attack. So the 26tli
American Division and the 167th French Divi-
sion came out for a rest, and the Rainbow took
over the job that both of them had been handling.
The 84th Infantry Brigade, under Brigadier-
General Robert A. Brown, took the sector of the
26th Division, and the 83rd Infantry Brigade,
under Brigadier-G^eneral Michael J. Lenihan,
took the 167th Division's sector. The 84th Bri-
gade, with the 168th (Iowa) and 167th (Ala-
bama) Infantry regiments, had the right of the
divisional line, and the 83rd Brigade, with the
165th (New York) and 166th (Ohio) regiments,
had the left.
The artillery of the 26th Division stayed in
position to work with the 67th Artillery Brigade
of the Rainbow, commanded by Brigadier-Gen-
eral George G. Gatley.
Coming up for the relief on July 24, the Rain-
bow Division had marched to within two kilo-
meters of the front line. Seeking for the point
where they were to establish the Post of Com-
mand for the 168th regiment. Colonel Bennett,
The Rainbow's First Attack 75
Lieutenant-Colonel Tinley, and the regimental
adjutant. Captain Van Order, performed that
day the novel feat of riding around No-Man's-
Land in an automobile.
They didn't do it purposely. This had not
been a quiet sector like the sectors the Rainbow
were familiar with ; the landscape lacked the es-
tablished institutions of rusty brown camouflage
screens, old trench systems and fields of barbed
wire. So the Colonel, the Lieutenant-Colonel
and the adjutant, looking for woods where the
"P. C." would be, suddenly found themselves in
the" neighborhood of new trenches. And when
they had oriented themselves it dawned upon
them that they were looking upon those trenches
from the wrong side. They got back without
waste motion and discovered they had gone about
a kilometer too far to the north.
This time the Rainbow Division found its work
cut out for it. So to speak, it was getting up
into the war's higher seats of learning, having
left behind the stand-pattism of the Luneville
and Baccarat sectors and the plain, old-fashioned
doggedness of the Champagne. Now its job
76 The Story of the Rainbow Division
was not merely to hold what ground it had but
to get more ; not merely to outfight the Germans
but to outwit them-r-to demonstrate that they
knew more about driving the Boche back than
«
the Boche knew about standing fast. Instead of
defending, they were now to attack.
And du-ectly in front of the 167th and 168th
Infantry regiments, as the Rainbow took over
the job from the Yankee Division and the
French, lay the Boche in one of the finest little
nests in France. They called it La Croix Rouge
Farm ; it was in a clearing surrounded by forests
on four sides, and a road ran diagonally through
it from southeast to northwest. The far side of
the road was lined with German machine-guns;
the woods on three sides were lined with them,
and you couldn't see them.
The division completed all its dispositions dur-
ing the day and night of July 25, and without
wasting a moment of time the 168th attacked La
Croix Rouge Farm early on the morning of the
26th.
Two platoons of F Company, commanded by
Capt. Charles J. Casey, took it. They discov-
The Rainbow's First Attack 77
ered a little ditch leading up to it, and, sneaking
through this in the morning mists, surprised the
Grermans, killed or captured them and turned the
machine-guns eastward upon the enemy in the
woods.
All that afternoon the wooded slopes around
La Croix Rouge Farm formed the ring in which
a terrific battle went on. The men of the Rain-
bow— ^Alabamians on the left of the farm and
lowans on the right — ^had their first experience
with those withering blasts of machine-gun fire
with which the German Army protected its
masterly retreat during all the days that fol-
lowed.
The morale of the Boche was still high — as
high as ever, in fact. While von Ludendorfi^
would have liked to withdraw from the Chateau-
Thierry pocket at his own will, taking his sup-
plies with him, he was nevertheless prepared to
try to delay even a dashing American efi^ort to
drive him out. And the beginning and the end
of his preparation was the machine-gun — hun-
dreds and thousands of machine-guns — with men
behind them who knew the weapon and had high
- ■' -^— '
78 The Story of the Rainboro Division
confidence in it and no small amount of courage
in handling it.
These things the battle for La Croix Rouge
Farm taught the Rainbow Division at the outset
of its participation in the Aisne-Marne Offensive.
These things it had impressed upon it again and
again — ^hom* after hour in blood and death —
while it struggled for new footholds always
farther northward, through yellow wheat-fields
where death lurked and over ridges whose crim-
son hue at evening was not always of the simset..
The Rainbow gave ground that 26th of July,
gave up La Croix Rouge Farm deliberately and
retired, and it was not the lesser part of valor
that they did. This new thing, this machine-gun
resistance, was dawning on them; to capture a
place and to be basking in contentment, and then
to discover that there was no contentment be-
cause just beyond was the German with his ma-
chine-guns and their newly-won prize was his
field of fire. Always it must be on, and on, and
on, with no end in sight except death for the Ger-
mans or for them.
But that night the Germans evacuated La
The Rainbow's First Attack 7»
Croix Rouge Farm for the second time. It was
the key to the position on that line, and finding it
too hot to hold they retired nearly six kilometers
to a new defensive line across the Om'cq River.
Here was a new situation — an unpleasant one.
True, the enemy had given up six kilometers, but
now he was in a great natural fortress, with the
village of Sergy in the valley backed by bare hills
that sloped up to plateaus eighty meters high. On
the east there was flank protection for the Ger-
mans in groups of small woodlands, and there
was flank protection on the west in a small creek
called the Ru du* Pont Brule. Meurcy Farm
and more woodland lay in the valley of this creek
near its junction with the Ourcq, and farther up
the creek was the village and chateau of Nesles.
Farther to the right the village of Scringes com-
manded Meurcy Farm and the Forest of Nesles
was behind the village of that name.
It was the tried, veteran army of Imperial
Germany fighting desperately near the end of its
fourth year of superhuman eff^ort and ideally
situated for defense, against the new, untried
soldiers from the United States, who had no ad-
80 The Story of the Rainbow Dixndon
vantages except freshness in the general matter
of war, and not much of that, considering the
gruelling struggle in the Champagne. But the
Rainbow Division went to it.
Over the six kilometers the Germans had given
up after evacuating La Croix Rouge Farm the
division moved with little trouble, disposing eas-
ily of sacrifice detachments of machine-gunners
left behind to delay the advance. Only at La
Croix Blanche Farm, northeast of La Croix
Rouge Farm, was there anything much resem-
bling a battle. On the night of July 27th, the
division regained contact with the enemy's new
line. Machine-gun fire from the north bank of
the Ourcq fell upon armored cars that were re-
connoitering ahead of the infantry, and the col-
imins halted for the night about a kilometer south
of the little river.
At dawn next morning the fight to cross the
Ourcq began. The Germans had blown up two
bridges near Sergy ; the stream was swollen with
rains to a width of fourteen meters and a depth
of four, and the men had to struggle through the
little torrent. Machine guns opened on them
The Rainbow's First Attack 81
from Sergy directly in front and Aleurcy Farm
on the flank and the stream ran red with the
blood of the Rainbow.
The men of New York's old 69th, commanded
then by Colonel Frank McCoy, got the first foot-
hold on the opposite bank and before noon the
other four regiments were coming over, Ohioans
of the 166th on the extreme left, Xew Yorkers
next, then the Alabamians of the 167th, and on
the extreme right the 168th from Iowa.
The struggle for Sergy and JMeurcy Farm
lasted all that day, all night and throughout the
morning of July 29th. Once on the enemy's
side at the Ourcq, Colonel Screws' men from
Alabama and Colonel Bennett's men from Iowa
rushed Sergy and took it. They were swept
back to the river bank by machine-gun blasts
from the woods on the left. They rallied,
rushed the village again, and this time ran into
one of the best divisions in the .German Army,,
the Fourth Prussian Guards.
Americans who were at home then will remem-
ber the thrilling message of M. Andre Tardieu
— ^'^Today" (or words to that effect) "American
82 The Story of the Rainbow Division
soldiers met and defeated on the River Ourcq
the best troops of the Prussian Guard." Amer-
ican troops did defeat the best troops of the Prus-
sian Guard and it was of this battle and of the
Rainbow Division that M. Tardieu spoke that
day.
They defeated the Prussians but at what
seemed then a terrible cost. Throughout the
whole of July 28th, the lines rolled back and
forth. Now the Americans had Sergy; now the
Germans had it. To the right the 28th Divi-
sion fought for Hill 220; to the left the 83rd
Brigade of the Rainbow struggled for Meurcy
Farm.
Again, as in Champagne, the Rainbow had to
fight an air-battle as well as a ground battle.
Swarms of German combat planes were over
them constantly, darting earthward and firing
machine-guns into them. All Allied planes
seemed to have been driven from the sky; Ger-
man air supremacy seemed complete. But as
the Champagne had produced Corporal Doty
of the 165th, as a stalker of bird-men, so the Bat-
tle of the Ourcq produced a "ground-ace" in Ser-
The Rainbow's First Attack 83
geant Frank Gardello, Jr., of the same regi-
ment's machine-gun company, who brought down
two planes with one burst.
Both were flying low, one directly over the
other. Gardello's fire riddled the upper one and
when he fell he landed squarely on the lower one.
Both aviators were killed. Never before or since
in the whole history of the war, was a similar
feat performed.
It was growing dusk on July 28th when the
Alabamians and lowans rushed Sergy for the
last time that day — and held it. The German
artillery shelled it savagely all night and clouds
of bombing planes circled around and around it,
dropping tons of bombs, but the Rainbows hud-
dled closer and closer behind ruined house-walls,
and stuck.
Then early in the morning of the 29th the
Prussian Guard returned to the battle and in a
final desperate charge drove the doughboys out
of Sergy for the seventh time; drove them back
to the banks of the Ourcq. Thus after two days
of fighting after the Gterman retirement from La
Croix Rouge Farm, the Rainbow had made no
i
84 The Story of the Rainbow Division
permanent gains and its casualties had been
heavy. Meurcy Farm, Sergy and Hill 220 were
still German strongholds, commanded by ma-
chine-guns in other German strongholds farther
on. Something had to be« done.
The thing that was done was the thing that,
more than any other one battle move, broke the
morale of the. German army and bade fair, later
on to turn its splendid rear-guard action into a
rout.
The Rainbow Division, having fought nothing
but stand-up fights against a foe who could either
be bayoneted or sniped, entered the battle of the
Ourcq knowing nothing of the Boches' perfection
in machine-gun defense. The Germans simply
"had the reach on them." No soldiers in the
world were more willing than the Americans to
come to close quarters with the enemy and fight
it out with bayonets. The difficulty the Rain-
bow was finding here on the Ourcq was in get-
ting to close quarters without being killed or dis-
abled. Rushing through the open up to the con-
cealed German machine-guns in the hope of
frightening the gunners into surrender, or of
The Rainbow's First Attack 85
catching them off their guard, was sheer suicide.
That was now certain.
So then and there the Bainbow conceived and
launched a typically American style of attack;
launched it as extemporaneously as a great ora-
tor in the heat of a debate laimches an immortal
phrase. It claims no credit for having orig-
inated it. In one form or another the American
divisions who had fought in Belleau Wood and
up to La Croix Rouge Farm and before Sois-
sons had used the same method of capturing
G^erman machine-gun nests. But the Rainbow
knew nothing about that. It had had no school-
ing in such work. Without time for either rest
or schooling it had come from a sector of patrols
and raids to a sector of defense and from there
directly to a sector of offense, and what it learned
it had to learn by bitter, costly experience.
What it did now, with Sergy, Meurcy Farm,
Seringes, Hill 220 and the whole line of other
flank positions still in German hands after nearly
two days of fighting, was an inspiration bom of
desperation; the grim, determined desperation
86 The Story of the Rainbow Division
of baffled men bound to beat an opponent at his
own game if it takes a lifetime.
On the morning of the 29th the entire Rain-
bow Division made a general attack, not only
upon Sergy and Meurcy Farm but upon the pla-
teau between. It was not a rush this time; it
was a painfully slow crawl. German machine-
guns blazed from fields of tall, yellow wheat on
top of the plateau. Then from the tall grass a
brown streak would suddenly shoot ahead for a
yard or two and disappear from view while the
German guns blazed at it. A moment of quiet,
then off to the left another brown streak and a
burst of bullets from the wheat. Then in the
center another, then another to the right, until a
half-dozen men were headed toward that single
German machine-gun, advancing in quick dives,
now left, now right, now center; and whenever a"
man dived a volley of rifles from his comrades an-
swered the stutter of the machine-gun.
And soon — though it might be a half hour or
an hour and though a sheaf of bullets might have
caught one of those brown streaks in midair so
that it never dived again — a little ring of men in
The Rainbow's First Attack 87
olive-drab would be around that machine-gun
nest, and "a kill" would be on.
One by one the,Grerman machine-gun nests
grew silent. As the day waned the clatter of
them, like the clatter of rivetting hammers, came
from farther and farther to the north. The
lowans took Sergy, They got some machine-
guns to a near crest of Hill 220, from which they
could fire into the German nests in the Arbre les
Jomblets and the Bois de Planchette.
Here on Hill 220, Sergeant B. W. Hamilton
of M Company, 168th Infantry, wounded while
out ahead of his own line, was attacked by ten
Prussian Guardsmen. He shot five and the rest
ran away.
The Alabamians got well on toward the top of
fhe plateau, and the 165th, unsuccessful at
Meurcy Farm with the new "Indian method" of
attack on machine-guns, called for a long con-
centration of artillery fire on the place; and
finally their Irish tempers got the best of them
and they went at it with their bayonets as they
had gone over the top in the Champagne. They
88 The Story of the Rainbow Division
killed the German machine-gunners in hand-to-
hand fighting.
In the afternoon Colonel Hough's men of the
166th Ohio regiment stormed Seringes on its
high, hare hill. It was a gallant charge across
twelve hundred meters of ground entirely with-
out cover while machine-gun nests flanked it and
heavy fire came from the village. Instead of
taking it hy direct attack the'Ohioans worked
around it and took Hill 184 to the northwest.
From there they silenced the machine-guns in
Seringes and then went down and bayoneted the
gunners who were left.
It was shortly after this, you will remember,
that stories became current about Germans be-
ing found chained to their machine-gims in the
woods. There also began coming, from German
soui-ces, stories of inhuman cruelty of American
soldiers. There had been many other stories
theretofore, bearing on the inhuman treatment
of German soldiers by their ofiicers, and there
had been much German propaganda intended to
coimteract stories of German fiendishness and
cruelty.
The Rainhow's First Attack 89
But behind those stories in those days of late
July and early August, 1918, was something
more than propaganda. There was looming up
in the German army a feeling of terror of these
quick, forward-moving men in olive-drab, who
were not afraid even of the wonderful German
machine-guns, but who dived and wriggled
toward them and were suddenly all around them
in desperate little rings.
German gunners were being chained to their
guns; it was becoming necessary. And since
men at bay will always fight for their lives, the
fights around the machine-gun nests in the Bat-
tle of the Ourcq were nearly always fights to the
death. The Rainbow Division took few prison-
ers in that battle ; its record of prisoners cap-
tured throughout the war falls short of the rec-
ords of one or two other divisions; it usually
fought to kill. That was the cruelty of which
the Germans spoke.
With this advance of the Rainbow through the
first of the Ourcq's great defenses, the German
High Command, too, became alarmed for the
dignity of its retirement from the Chateau-
90 The Story of the Rainbow Division
Thierry Salient. It began putting in reserves.
Opposite the Rainbow there was now from left
to right, the 10th Landwehr Division, the 6th
Bavarian Reserve, the Fourth Prussian Guard
and the 201st Division. Nowhere else along the
whole fighting front were German troops massed
so densely as opposite the Rainbow, the 28th and
the 8rd American Divisions at this stage of the
Ourcq Battle.
By eight o'clock on the night of July 80,
Colonel Fairchild, the Rainbow Division Sur-
geon, had reported the losses in wounded alone
as 3,276 men, from the beginning of the fighting
at La Croix Rouge Farm. Of the killed no rec-
ord could be kept at that time. The brave men
who had died were out there in the waving wheat-
fields and the bodies of some of them had floated
down the Ourcq.
But neither losses nor German reinforcements,
could stop the Rainbow Division now that it had
started. The Foret de Nesles lay before it, full
of German defenses, and from the woods on Hill
220 machine-guns still raked the positions of the
168th. At nine a. m. on the 10th Colonel Screws
The Rainbow's First Attack 91
and his 167th Alabamians started through the
wheat toward the Chateau de Nesles, and with
the aid of the sniping guns of the 26th Division's
artillery which had blasted out machine-gun
nests, crossed the plateau and dug in close to the
Chateau. The 168th had to dig in after progress-
ing about five hundred yards.
In Meurcy Farm Colonel McCoy's New York-
ers could only dig in and seek shelter from the
withering fire down the vaUey of the Ru du Pont
Brule. Light field batteries and machine-guns
played constantly on the ruins, and an unceasing
duel went on between them and the 151st Ar-
tillery from Minnesota. The most of the 165th
could have done was hold and they did that with
heroic tenacity.
That night the Ohioans of the 166th, finding
Seringes a rather hot place to hold, worked a
ruse. They deserted the village. During the
afternoon enemy patrols, filtering into it, found
jt empty. More came in and still more, until
by nightfall a large body of them were there,
probably preparing new machine-gun positions,
if not preparing a counter-attack.
i
92 The Story of the Rainbow Division
And all this time Colonel Hough's men were
hanging to the edge of Hill 184, and when dark-
ness had fallen they surrounded Seringes, at-
tacked it from every side, and in a fierce hand-to-
hand battle mopped it as clean of Germans as a
new bathroom floor.
The 168th fought its last fight of the Ourcq
campaign on August 1, when it took Hill 212.
It was a terrible task and the fight lasted all
through the hot day. The whole regiment was
in the battle at one stage or another with Major
Claude Stanley's second battalion leading the
first attack. Major Emory Worthington's First
Battalion relieving Stanley, and the Third Bat-
talion under Major Guy Brewer coming in
toward the end of the day. The Third Battal-
ion was the first to get a firm foothold on the hill.
It was Private Burke, Major Brewer's per-
sonal orderly, who carried to regimental head-
quarters at La Motte Farm the message that
Hill 212 had at last been captured, after three
runners who had started with the same message
had been killed by German artillery. Shells fell
in the whole Ourcq valley that day like rain.
The Rainbow's First Attack 93
Hill 212 commanded the Foret de Nesles,
which was now the only strong position the
Boche had left in his whole Ourcq system.
French and American artillery concentrating
upon it, silenced the German batteries and they
began to withdraw. And on the night of August
1, the German infantry pulled itself together
quietly, and silently stole away toward the River
Vesle.
The Rainbow had outwitted, outgamed and
outfought the best soldiers in the German army.
They were now in full retreat from the Ourcq.
The pursuit started next morning. The 168th,
exhausted after six days and nights of constant
fighting of the hardest kind, was relieved by the
117th Engineers from California and South
Carolina, commanded by Colonel Kelly. This
regiment, ready now to attack as infantry as they
had been ready to defend in the Champagne,
carried on the chase with the Ohio, Alabama and
New York infantry regiments.
That day the Rainbow advanced through the
Foret de Nesles nearly five kilometers beyond
the point from which it had started in the morn-
.jr.
94 The Story of the Rdnboto Divirion
ing. The Grerpians in fheir hurry to get away
blew up great ammunition dumps, but the Rain-
bow came so closely upon their heels that they
deserted nearly lliirty thousand shells which the
division captured intact.
A line running between Mont St. Martin and
Chery Chartreuve was the limit of the Rainbow's
advance; between the first named point and La
Croix Rouge Farm the distance was seventeen
kilometers — ^the longest advance by any division
attacking between Soissons and Rheims. There
a relief of the Rainbow by the Fourth Division,
which had been progressing during the pursuit,
was completed, but the artillery stayed in position
for several days assisting the Fourth to maintain
a footing beyond the Vesle River.
The weather was hot, and the country full of
Tuined villages, dead, imburied bodies — ^Boche
and American — and thousands of dead horses.
The men were dirty; baths were next to impos-
sible. But instead of being withdrawn from the
salient which seemed on the verge of becoming a
pest-hole, the Rainbow Division infantry waa
The Rcinhow's First Attack 95-
held in reserve for nearly a week. Sickness
broke out.
And into the middle of this filthy backyard of
war with its sickening smells and sights and its
unkempt, lousy men there boimded on a fine
afternoon one Elsie Janis — ^flufi^y, beautiful^
piquant — ^not at all unlike a goddess just step-
ping out of the clouds for a bit to see what it was
all about down here below. That's what it
seemed like to the Rainbow Division.
They hauled a wagon-bed into an open field
and made a stage of it, and there Elsie Janis
danced and sang before a vast concourse of un-
washed doughboys who suddenly remembered
that there was such a thing in the world as a
pretty American girl— and were somewhat awed
and saddened at the remembrance. An aero-
plane came whirring overhead while Elsie Janis
sang "Oh, You Dirty Germans 1" It came so
low that you could see the black maltese cross on
the lower planes. But nobody minded.
CHAPTER VI
AND SPEAKING OF ELSIE JANIS
Was that the only bit of diversion that came to
the Rainbow Division? Was there anything at
all outside of fighting and the anticipation of
more fighting to keep up its morale?
Perhaps this is as fitting a place as any other to
tell about that. There is very little to tell.
Most of the diversion the Rainbow got it sup-
plied itself. Moving, as it did, from battle to
battle and from one part of the front to another,
it gave professional entertainers little chance to
catch up with it. It manufactured its own
amusements, whetting its sense of himior on the
French scenery and the country people. The
Rainbow Division lived twenty years over there
in less than a score of months; it caught its fun
where it found it. It had to.
So, as it rolled through France in box-cars or
96
And Specldng of Elsie Jams 97
trucks it got as many laughs out of a pair of
wooden shoes or an old gentleman riding on an
ox-cart as you at home were getting out of the
most popular comedians.
In the old Baccarat sector it had had more
time for the sort of diversion the Y. M. C. A.
brought later to the American troops in France.
But at that period the Y. M. C. A.'s system of
entertainments had not reached the wholly effi-
cient stage. The American Expeditionary
Force was new then, and so were its auxiliaries.
But the Y. M. C. A. had brought out base-
Balls and bats and gloves and on those quiet days
in May the American baseball season had opened
officially in Lorraine, France, where first-base
was likely to be a surviving splinter of a ruined
bam and home plate a filled-in shell hole. And
there were many sets of boxing gloves.
They used to stage bouts in the streets of the
front line villages in the Baccarat sector. The
lowans would fight the Alabamians and the New
Yorkers would fight the Ohioans, and inter-
State championship disputes were fought out
day after day. Sometimes these ring-battles
98 The Story of the Rainbow Division
drew big crowds. One of the biggest crowds
gathered one day toward the end of May in the
little town of Pexonne where a Franco- Ameri-
can bout was to take place. The "Franco" was
a French soldier. The American was Corporal
"Kid" Gorden of the Maryland Trench-Mortar
Battery.
They had roped off a ring in the middle of the
town square of Pexonne. More than three hun-
dred men were gathered there — ^French and
American soldiers. It was a warm, clear day —
not a cloud in the sky, and the low hum of planes
echoed over the land like the pleasant summer
noise of bees.
Gorden was getting the best of the French-
man. The latter had come up groggily for the
fifth round and the Americans in the crowd were
shouting, "Put him out, Kidl One haymaker'U
finish himl Land on his beakl" The American
boy tucked his left ear behind his shoulder,
rushed in and was uncoiling a terrific right swing
when a strange noise shut out the sound of cheer-
ing— a loud, roaring buzz directly overhead.
Somebody shouted "Look outl" The crowd
And Speaking of Elsie Jams 99
looked up, and there was a German plane, swoop-
ing low, making straight for the ringside.
Instinctively the group broke, scurrying for
cover. Gorden's haymaker stopped in mid-air ; a
dozen arms were around the groggy French
boxer dragging him away. And then with a
splintering crash a bomb hit the village "]6pi-
cerie" and tore it to pieces.
That was the last street boxing-match the
Rainbow Division held in the Baccarat sector.
The German aviator had seen the animated black
spot below him, just behind the Allied lines, and,
coming lower he had made it out to be a group
of men — an excellent target. And the little
French grocery store which he had hit with his
bomb was on the edge of the square less than a
hundred yards from the boxing ring.
So orders forbidding the grouping of many
men in one spot were more strictly enforced and
the boxing matches stopped. Thereafter, when
the men wanted to box they had to take to the
forests in the rear and they could not get there
unless they happened to be enjoying a relief
from the trench vigil. But the ball games con-
100 The Story of the Bainboro Division
tinued, with the doors and windows of the vil-
lages serving as bleachers and grandstands and
the pitchers working with one eye on the skies
and the other on the batters. And everybody
with his gas-mask at the *'alert."
There had been band concerts, too, in the
Baccarat days. At sunset they held retreat and
the regimental bands had played Sousa marches
and winding up with "The Star Spangled Ban-
ner,'* while the doughboys in long ranks stood at
"present arms," and every American within the
sound of the band stopped dead in his tracks and
stood in reverent silence, thinking of his home
and his country.
And in a few minutes, if the wind was right,
there would come faintly from the north the
sound of brass horns playing "The Watch on
the Rhine" — a German band at the evening cere-
mony.
Thus lived the Rainbow in France, thriving
(unlike "Jack*' of the proverb) on nearly all
work and hardly any play; and never growing
too dull to cut a German throat. Such groups
of traveling minstrels as came to other divisions
And Speaking of Elsie Janis 101
and made merry seldom if ever came to the Rain-
bow. Its chances to play ended when it left the
Baccarat sector and those chances never returned
mitil the war was over.
CHAPTER Vn
WITH THE FIEST AMERICAN AEMY IN THE 8TE0LL
THROUGH ST. MIHIEL
There were gaps in the ranks of the Rainbow
now — ^big gaps. Behind it along Europe's bat-
tle line from Lorraine to the River Vesle,
stretched a long trail, marked here by. wooden
crosses, marked there by muddy momids. It had
been in France nine months and it was an Amer-
ican division of veterans.
They took it out of the reeking country be-
tween the Ourcq and the Vesle on August 12,
and marched it back to the La-Ferte-sous-
Jouarre area. There it rested a couple of days.
There were chateaus in La-Ferte-sous-Jouarre,
and broad roads shaded with mighty trees; the
weather was warm and the air sweet and spark-
ling like old wine. And if you had luck you got
a hot bath and a haircut ; and if you were an of-
102
The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 108
ficer with an automobile you could steal into
Paris and grab off a couple of fancy meals and
see the places where the bright lights used to be.
But La-F^rte-sous-Jouarre with Paris in
touring distance was too good to last. On
August 17 the division was loaded into cars
marked "Hommes 40, Chevaux 8," and rolled
off to the Bourmont area. It was booked for a
period of "intensive training."
Bourmont was on the road between Langres
and Neuf chateau where the people were friendly
and the food pretty plentiful. You could buy ex-
tras for the mess, like creamy old camembert and
— ^well, principally, creamy old camembert — at
moderate prices. It was a beautiful country, too
- — chilly and green, and for dignity of proportions,
prodigality of distribution and richness of iscent
its manure heaps were the finest the Rainbow
Division had seen.
Here, beyond the sound of guns for the first
time since February, the Rainbow reveled in the
nearest thing to a rest that it had during the
whole of its career in France. All it had to do
was study every branch of open warfare, with
- *-"^ • — '^-
104 The Story of the Bcdnbow Dixnsion
special emphasis on the attacking of machine-
gun nests by advancing infantry accompanied
by machine-guns and light artillery. On tEe
Ourcq it had rehearsed this thing for six days with
more or less assistance toward the achievement
of proficiency by the flower of the German Army.
But here it got a polish, an expertness that
proved valuable later on.
The division stayed in Bourmont imtil Au-
gust 30. Immediately after the Battle of the
Ourcq, while it was still in reserve, important
changes had taken place in staff and in the line.
Colonel Douglas MacArthur, the Chief of
Staff, had been made a Brigadier General and
put in command of the 84th Infantry Brigade
comprising the Alabama and Iowa infantry regi-
ments and the Georgia Machine-gun Battalion.
Lieutenant Colonel William N. Hughes had been
promoted from the position of G3 or Divisional
Chief of Operations to Chief of Staff. Major
Grayson M. P. Murphy became G3. Captain
Robert J. Gill, commander of the Trench-mortar
Battery from Maryland was promoted to the
grade of Major and became Gl, or Assistant
The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 105
Chief of Staff, succeeding Colonel J. W. Beach-
am. Major Stanley M. Rumbough, Adjutant
of the 84th Brigade and Captain Walter G.
Wolf, assistant to G3, changed places.
Replacements, those freshly arrived, untried
soldiers at whose advent the veteran survivors of
hard battles look askance, and without whom no^
division could continue its career as a division,
came to the Rainbow in great numbers. The
gaps in the ranks were filled. Lost and battle-
scarred equipment was replaced by new, up-to-
date fighting material. The Rainbow Division,
in a sort of new Camp Mills, having found it's
fighting spirit in the field, now was being made
over — ^getting its second wind, so to speak.
For great things were in the air. Other divi-
sions besides the Rainbow were coming into this
Bourmont area — ^most of them veterans also —
for intensive training, replacements and new
equipment. It was the gathering of the First
American Army. The helter-skelter group of
American divisions likely to be thrown into the
line anywhere, was a thing of the past. On the
soil of France a real army had been born to the
106 The Story of the Bcinhow Division
United States. The Rainbow Division was a
part of it.
Greater still Ais army was about to start, on
its own initiative and responsibility, without help
or counsel from the armies of the other allies, an
offensive against the German line. The Rain-
bow Division was to be in it.
It was a strange thing, but it is actually a fact,
that the French civilians told the American sol-
diers about this offensive before they heard it
from their own commanders. They even pro-
fessed to know accurately where the thrust was
to be made. They said it would be made at St.
Mihiel; and they were right.
The First American Army was going to try
to repeat in the old Lorraine salient what had
just happened in the Soissons-Rheims salient.
That ugly nose of the German army had been
mashed flat, and now the same thing was to be
done to this one.
It is not entirely correct to say that this First
American Army, commanded by General John
J. Pershing, was to begin work with no help or
eoimsel whatever from the other allies. Aside
aA
The StroU Through St. Mihiel 107
from the constant presence at headquarters of
divisions, brigades, regiments and even battal-
ions, of officers of the French Mission, and aside
from the fact that most of the basic knowledge
upon which it was expanding had been derived
from the French and British, there was a little
of both help and counsel now.
The counsel cartie from Marshal Foch. He
told General Pershing that unless the attack on
St. Mihiel was made during the first week in
September it could not be made at all on account
of the heavy fall of rain in that section of France,
which started at the beginning of the second week
in the month. So the attack was set for Sep-
tember 7.
But as the time drew near not everything was
ready. It was a gigantic business, this first at-
tack, and the First American Army was func-
tioning for the first time. For the first time its
stafi^ — ^the thinking machine that plans moves and
battles down to the last detail — was working "on
its own.'' The American fighting soldiers had
proven themselves; there was little doubt about
what they would do, but until now the soldiers
108 2^he Story of the Rainbow Division
who had done their thinking for them had been
French. So St. Mihiel was not to be a test of
the plain everyday fighting ability of the Amer-
icans but of their generalship — ^their staff work.
And it was a tremendous test. Fear that it
would have disastrous results had moved Mar-
shal Foch to discourage General Pershing in the
imdertaking before he uttered his coimsel about
the weather.
Transportation difficulties arose. The move-
ment of nearly six hundred thousand men to the
region around Toul tied up the means of moving
up enough ammunition and supplies for the big
drive. The First American Army could not
afford to make its initial effort with a shortage
of ammunition or supplies. Complete success in
the outcome was absolutely necessary. And so
as it developed that September 7 would find the
army unready to attack, the push was postponed
to September 12, rain or no rain.
As a weather prophet Marshal Foch made
good. But as a judge of the American Army's
disposition to recognize obstacles he failed.
The Rainbow Division had started forward on
*
The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 109
August 80. Moving always at night and rest-
ing during the day in inconspicuous places (for
the attack was to be a surprise) it marched about
one hundred and twenty kilometers to the Foret
de la Reine. There it went into camp in shel-
ter tents. It became a division of mud-dwell-
ers, lying quietly in the sticky black muck all day
and wallowing about in it through the night, for
by daylight no movement of men or transporta-
tion was permitted.
Rain fell steadily and the roads became hor-
rors. Through the downpour and the absolute
blackness the Texans of the 117th Supply Train
and the Kansas men of the 117th Ammunition
Train struggled forward inches at a time with
•
the deep mud sucking their trucks back and the
pitch-dark roads seeming to fall away beneath
them. Nearly always about twenty-five per
cent of all the Rainbow's transportation was
stalled impotently in the mud and wrecking
crews were at work day and night. It began to
look as though Marshal Foch had known some-
thing when he said it couldn't be done. But the
long boys from the Texas and Kansas prairies
110 The Story of the Bainbotv DivUion
didn't know it couldn't be done, so they went
ahe«i and did it.
The Boche thought it couldn't be done; they
didn't dream it was being done. It is likely that
after the reverses in the Marne salient the Ger-
man high command decided to withdraw from
the St. Mihiel salient and take up a positioi^
along the Hindenburg line under the guns of
Metz. But they were in no hurry about it ; here
were the fall rains, and who ever heard of fight-
ing after the fall rainfi had started? Certainly
not Marshal Foch.
And while they thought these things the First
American Army landed on them with both muddy
feet.
The bombardment started at one c^'clock on
the morning of September 12. It was not the
greatest preliminary bombardment of the war;
compared to the deafening roars of the Cham-
pagne battle it sounded weak. But it did the
work. There were some French Corps and
Army artillery with the American batteries, and
together in four hours they tore great holes in the
trench, wire and machine-gun defenses the Ger-
/
The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 111
mans had perfected in the salient during four
years.
At five o'clock, in a pouring rain and through
a thick mist the infantry started.
The Rainbow Division, as part of the Fourth
Corps under Major-General Joseph T. Dickman,
jumped off along the southern boimdary of the
salient east of Mont Sec; its sector extended
from Beaumont northeast to Flirey, and included
Seicheprey, where the Germans had sprung a
surprise attack on the 26th Division earlier in
the year, inflicting heavy losses and capturing
nearly two hundred prisoners.
The Rainbow was the center division of the
Fourth Corps, with the 89th on its right and the
First on its left. On the right of the 89th was
the First Corps under Major-General Hunter
Liggett, comprising the 2nd, 5th, 90th and 82nd
Divisions in that order from left to right.
On the western boundary of the salient the
Fifth Corps under Major-General George H.
Cameron, jumped off. It included the 4th and
26th American Divisions and a French division.
At the point of the salient were more French
112 The Story of the Rainbow Divmon
troops who were simply to hold fast and mop up
as the Americans, pressing in from the sides,
closed the jaws of the pincers and squeezed the
Boche either in or out.
In the same smooth-working battle formation
with which it plowed through the Germans in
every battle — Ohio, New York, Alabama, Iowa,
from left to right facing the enemy — ^the four
infantry regiments of the Rainbow Division
started through the St. Mihiel salient. In front
of every platoon were the California and South
Carolina engineers with wire-cutters and benga-
lore torpedoes, to cut or blow out any wire en-
tanglements that remained in the path of the in-
fantry.
For completeness of equipment in attacking
material the First American Army went at the
job of reducing the St. Mihiel salient in as per-
fect condition, probably, as any force of soldiers
that ever went over the top. There were tanks,
French and American ; there was railroad heavy
artillery, trench mortars, and gas and flame-
throwers. For the first time and the last in its
brief but busy life, the Rainbow Division saw
The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 118
the Allies in complete mastery of the air. The
French Independent Air Force and some Brit-
ish bombing squadrons had been put under Gen-
eral Pershing's command, and these, with our
own aviators, drove the Boche airmen out of the
sky.
The drive moved ahead like clockwork. The
old Seicheprey battlefield was taken by the Ohio
infantry regiment without any trouble. On the
right the Iowa doughboys encountered some re-
sistance in the woods northwest of Flirey. There
were moments of stiff fighting for the heights in
the vicinity of St. Bassant, but to the men who
had beaten the Gterman machine-gunners on the
Ourcq, the defenders of the St. Mihiel salient
were easy victims.
The Germans were taken almost completely
by surprise. What resistance they put up was
half-hearted. Their wire-fields were old and
rusty. Their answering artillery bombardment,
during the actual pushing operation at least, was
a joke.
The path of the Rainbow through the salient
was probably the most diflScult in the whole First
114 The Story of the Rainbow Division
Army. A road zig-zagged up through its sector
with six villages on it, and villages, offering pro-
tection to machine-gunners, are notably hard to
take. But after St. Bassant, Essey fell and
then Pannes, and there the Rainbow dug itself
into muddy foxholes and held on for the night.
Before them lay the villages of Beney and St.
Benoit.
It was at Essey that the Rainbow men saw the
French civilians they had liberated, — the first
French civilians to be freed from German mili-
tary domination by an AUied victory. For
though during the four years the battle line had
surged back and forth over many French vil-
lages the inhabitants of those places had long be-
fore fled southward as refugees and their homes
Were in ruins. Here within the St. Mihiel sal-
ient were villages that had become German prizes
in the war's first year, that had escaped all but
desultory shell-fire from the French, where the
people had lived until now under German mas-
ters. Nowhere else had the German line been
bent to release such hostage towns from German
rule.
The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 115
There were few wild demonstrations — ^little
hailing of the deliverers with flowers and flags.
In the dismal rain and mud the dejected old vil-
lagers silently watched the Americans coming
through ; they were broken-spirited old people —
few cheers left in them. Forced submission to
brutality for four long years had numbed them
so that they were unresponsive to one of the most
thrillingly significant happenings in history.
In Pannes there were big German military
storehouses with queer stores in them. The
Rainbow men, hunting around for souvenirs,
came forth from these places, rainsoaked and dis-
reputable-looking soldiers, carrying brand-new,
shiny patent-leather boots and wearing high silk
hats atop their old tin helmets. The place was
full of patent-leather boots, silk hats and um-
brellas. It was in Pannes, too, that they got a
billiard table and a phonograph, both unharmed
despite the Allied bombardment.
Next day the attack was resumed and the line
pushed through Beney and St. Benoit to a point
just south of Haumont. The Rainbow Division
had advanced nineteen kilometers, a longer dis-
116 The Story of the Rainbow Dixnsion
tance than any other division in the First Amer-
ican Army, and had shared in the reduction of
the entire St. Mihiel salient, liberating two hun-
dred and forty square kilometers of French ter-
ritory and capturing sixteen thousand prisoners
and four hundred and forty-three pieces of artil-
lery.
But what was more important to the tired, war-
weary world, the First American Army, acting
independently, had demonstrated its ability to
carry on a major offensive not only with success
but with a smoothness and a smashing directness
that no one would have believed possible at that
stage of its development. The Germans had
been swept from the salient as quickly and as
neatly as though a broom had swished them out.
Only in the matter of moving up the supplies
and ammunition and in keeping the artillery
close up behind the advancing infantry did the
machinery of the offensive function poorly. Had
the German power of counter-attack not been
so demoralized by the suddenness and unexpect-
edness of the blow there might have been disas-
ter in this fact.
The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 117
The roads across No-Man's-Land had been
entirely destroyed, and the condition of the
ground and the weather made repairs difficult.
Colonel Kelly's engineers labored incessantly to
get the Rainbow's roads into shape, but traffic
poured in on them from all directions, and at the
village of Flirey there was unbelievable conges-
tion. In four directions from the cross-roads in
the center of Flirey were masses of from two to
four lanes of traffic for distances of from three
to five miles. Nothing could move in any direc-
tion. Stafi^ automobiles were there from three
different divisions ; heavy artillery, tractors, sup-
ply and ration- wagons, motorcycles and tanks —
all locked in the most hopeless tangle. At some
points this part of the American Army was at a
complete standstill for twenty-four hours.
Several well-placed shells in this mass from
the German guns would have wrought terrible
havoc. But all the German guns that hadn't
been captured were being desperately dragged
off to the Hindenburg line by an army that
hadn't time to realize what had hit it. Intelli-
gence found on captured prisoners showed that
118 The Story of the Rcinbow Divimon
the Germans did not expect the attack during
the rain, and that they considered it a rather
mean thing to do — an advantage that would not
have been taken by the French and British.
They had been caught in the act of withdrawing
their artillery from their old positions to the line
of La Chaussee, where it would have inflicted
considerable damage to the advancing Ameri-
cans.
Back on the Hindenburg line, however, and
under the guns of Metz they regathered their
scattered wits and proceeded to shell the new line
and the rear areas heavily. Day and night they
rained shrapnel and high explosive on the First
American Army, not concentrating their fire on
any particular points, but covering everything.
For several days after the drive the St. Mihiel
sector was the most active in the matter of artil-
lery duelling on the whole western front.
Brigadier-General Douglas MacArthur, com-
manding the 84th Brigade of the Rainbow Divi-
sion, realized this activity in time, perhaps, to
save his life. He had established his headquarters
in a chateau at St. Benoit, almost in the front
•s.
The Stroll Through St. Mihiel 119
lines. It was under full observation from the
German positions. For a time it escaped the
shelling because the Germans never dreamed that
a brigade commander was living there, ahnost in
the front line trenches.
One day, though, several shells fell pretty close
to it and General MacArthur decided to move
out. And the day after he moved the Germans,
having noted the activity around the place,
shelled it fiercely and reduced it to a blazing,
smoking heap of ruins.
Gteneral Menoher, the Rainbow Division Com-
mander, was also forced to alter plans for estab-
lishing division headquarters in the St. Mihiel
sector, but for a different reason. Looking at
the map he had decided upon the village of
Maizerais, about a half kilometer from Essey. It
looked like a pretty good town on the map. But
when he arrived at the spot, expecting to see a
village with at least a few decent habitations in
it, he found nothing. Maizerais was not only a
ruin; it was an almost extinct ruin. Over the
crumbled foundations of shell-shattered houses
grass had grown; a casual observer would have
y
120 Tine Story of the JRcdnbow Division
marked it merely as an extraordinary rough-
surfaced field. As a destroyed French town
Maizerais held the record, so far as the Rainbow
was concerned, throughout the whole war. So
Gteneral Menoher established his headquarters in
Essey. About two miles from Essey was the
Forest of the Lovely Willow.
There the Germans, feeling secure in the un-
challenged possession of the land for four years,
Ijad built themselves a suburban village like unto
the places tired city dwellers joiu^ney to on Sun-
days in contemplation of a "back-to-the-land"
movement. They had turned the Forest of the
Lovely Willow into a pretty little bungalow
park.
General Menoher, abandoning Essey, took it
over later for Rainbow Division Headquarters,
and he and his whole staff and detachments from
Lieutenant Colonel Ruby Garrett's Missouri
Signal Corps — about three himdred men in all —
lived and flourished there for several days, con-
vinced, before they left, that the better part of
"5^ultur," as the Gtermans practiced it, was the
art of being comfortable.
The StroU Through St. Mihiel 121
Pretty rustic walks with hand railings curled
through and around its cluster of cosy houses;
there was one of those amusement park rifle
ranges with a moving target ; the Offizier-Kasino
was snugly upholstered in red, with bright elec-
tric lamps, tasteful wall-paper, a butler's pantry
and electric push-buttons for summoning the
drinks or the chicken-salad.
The rest-house for soldiers was a pretty little
chalet with picture post-cards plastered on the
walls, showing the German Army being joyously
greeted in Brussels, and London crumbling into
the Thames under Zeppelin bombardments.
And there were rows and rows of houses for
officers' billets, rows of squad cottages like hunt-
ing-lodges in the Adirondacks; a bowling alley,
an electric power-house, a hospital, a central
kitchen. It was a tiny model city, and to live
there after the mud and the foxholes was some-
what like a vacation for the Rainbow's head-
quarters.
Not a mine or a booby-trap had been planted
in the whole place, so rapidly had the Germans
left it. They had not even taken time to remove
122 The Story of the Rcdnbow Division
signs from the villages and the bungalow city,
calling upon all soldiers who wanted to settle on
the "conquered" land to file squatters' claims
with their officers !
And now, with the new line of the First Ameri-
can Army all consolidated and perfected, the men
of the Rainbow Division, now holding not only
their own sector, but that of the First Division
on the left as well, wanted to go on to Metz.
They felt sure they could take it. They growled
and fimied constantly about it. But they did
nothing except hold on to the new line under the
constant fire of German artillery, until the night
of September 22, four days before the opening
of the first Meuse-Argonne oflTenisve on Septem-
ber 26.
As soon as the St. Mihiel salient had been
reduced, artillery and reserve divisions had
started on their way westward for this, the su-
preme eflTort by the American armies. Absolute
secrecy was essential. So in order to prey upon
the Germans' nerves, to keep them in doubt as
to the next attacking point, and to obtain infor-
mation of their plans, several raids were planned
The StrpU Through St. Mihiel 128
and executed. Some of them had not been very
successful. It was on the night of September 22
that the Rainbow Division's turn came.
Haimiont, to the northwest of St. Benoit, and
Marimbois Farm, to the northwest, were selected
as the objectives. There were to be two raiding
parties to strike simultaneously, one at Marim-
bois Farm, to the northwest of St. Benoit, and
one at Haimaont, to the northeast. They were
to be "go-and-come" raids, like the one in the
Bois des Chiens, back at Baccarat, in May.
Detachments of picked men were made lyp,
one from M Company of the 167th (Alabama)!
Infantry, under Capt. Maurice Howe, and the
other from K Company of the 168th (Iowa) In-
fantry. Batteries of the Illinois (149th) Field
Artillery regiment were to support the Ala-
bamians and lowans.
And to make a long story short they rushed
over, while the artillery poured enfilading fire
into the farm and the village; killed more than
fifty Germans while most of them retired, fear-
ing & general attack, and brought back twenty-
five fine, healthy prisoners and two machine-
124 The Story of the Bcdnboro Divmon
guns. It was the best night's work around the
old St. Mihiel salient since the night the salient
had disappeared.
At about this time there were a few changes
;among unit commanders. Colonel Mitchell, by
Jhe way, had led the New Yorkers of the 165th
in the St. Mihiel drive. Colonel Frank McCoy
having been made a Brigadier-General and left
]the division. And now Colonel Kelly, leader of
Jhe Rainbow Engineers, was made engineer of
bh Army Corps, and Colonel J. M. Johnson
succeeded him, while Lieutenant-Colonel Tinley
^cceeded Colonel Bennet as commander of the
168th from Iowa.
And so the Rainbow Division stood, just in
front of the Hindenburg line, now looking back
on their part in the big American victory, now
looking longingly toward Metz, while from the
north and west there came to it the low rumble
tof many guns, chanting for the armies of Ger-
many their death song.^
CHAPTER VIII
THBOUGH THE ABGONNE TO SEDiiN
Trucks at four a. m. and good-by to St.
Mihiel! The Rainbow — a shock division now, to
be held back like a ring-champion's best punch,
till time for the knockout — ^was rushed over to
Benoit Vaux in the autumn-tinted country be-
hind Verdun.
That was October 1. Three days later to Rei-
court and on October 6 to the Bois de Mont-
faiicon, a pitiably wrecked forest, gouged and
chewed for four years by the guns of the world's
armies seeking to conquer and to defend Verdun.
And now Verdun lay behind the Rainbow
Division, while every day the roar of the battle
beyond came down to its dead streets and its
brave citadel fainter and fainter. And before
the Rainbow Division lay the line of the First
American Army fighting the fijial battle for the
125
126 The Story of the Rainbow Division
worid against the armies of Germany; and the
armies of Germany struggling with the last des-
perate strength of trapped and beaten beasts.
The Rainbow crouched in its black mudholes
waiting for orders to strike.
Again it becomes necessary ( as the storm nec-
essarily precedes the advent of the bright-hued
bow in the sky) to paint in a gray, neutral-tinted
background.
When we left the Rainbow Division in the last
chapter the breezes from the west were bearing
toward St. Mihiel the rumble of many guns. It
was the start of the Argonne-Meuse drive of
September 26 — ^the beginning of the end.
The echoes of the last American barrage in the
St. Mihiel salient had scarcely died away when
corps and army artillery and some divisions
in reserve were starting westward for this, prob-
ably the greatest single operation of the war.
Their trip had ended back of the line that
stretched from the Meuse River to the western
edge of the Argonne Forest. On the other side
of this line was the heart of "New Germany,"
built by the Grcrman army upon the ruins of
Through the Argorme to Sedan 127i
France and Belgium. During four years the
German war-making plants had accumulated
there; there were his two great military railway
lines, the northernmost running through Liege
and Namur, the southernmost running througK
Longuyon, Montmedy and Sedan. These lines/
the upper one starting at Cologne and curving
slightly southwest and the lower starting at
Cohlentz and curving first south and then north-
west, met and crossed east of Camhrai.
Through them all the armies of Germany in
France and Belgium were fed, clothed, armed,
supplied with ammimition and reinforced with
men. With them under control the German
armies were wonderfully mobile ; divisions could
be shifted from one part of the line to another
far away with great speed. Out of control —
with the lines of the Allies so close that they
were under bombardment by artillery, they
would be useless. Captured at any point they
would work the complete defeat of Germany.
The German High Command knew all this as
•well as it knew everything else about its own
chances for defeat or victory — ^which was very
128 The Story of the Rainbow Division
well, indeed. It was prepared to defend these
lines to its last resources in strategical cunning
and in men and arms.
With Metz as a pivot the Germans were pre-
pared to swing back slowly toward the east, with-
drawing no more rapidly than was necessary to
keep their railroads and stores under control,
and, pulling their house in behind them, so to
speak, retire eventually to their own borders and
fight forever. They had only, while so with-
drawing, to protect such of their railroad centers
as Sedan, Montmedy, or Longuyon and they
would get away in good order.
*
The objective of the American offensive which
began September 26 was Sedan, more than
twenty-five miles away from lines that had re-
mained virtually stationary since the fall of 1914.
It began discouragingly enough. Endless hills
and heavy woods were in its path. Of nine
American divisions that jumped off out of the
old French trenches on September 26 and started
through the barbed- wire growths and pitfalls and
machine-gun nests of foiu* years' preparation,
several came out in three days badly shot up.
Through the Argorme to Sedan 129,
Many of them had had no previous experience
whatever in the line, some had never been under
shell-fire. In the first two days they pushed
ahead seven kilometers, but they couldn't keep
it up.
Some of these divisions had been brought di-
rectly from the training areas and plunged
straightway into the attack on September 26.
They had never been under shell-fire before.
They had never heard the soimd of a German
gun or the whine of a German shell.
There stretched up ahead of them on the left
the great forest of Argonne, turned by Boche
military ingenuity into an almost impenetrable,
impregnable jungle of wire, mine-traps and
machine-guns. Hill lay behind hill like a suc-
cession of bumps in a roller-coaster and more
deep forests were spread over them. Of roads
there were virtually none. Tanks could not op-
erate. And ten kilometers from the line the
Grermans were trying to hold with these advan-
tages was the famous Kremhilde Line !
And so, finally, the "veteran'' American divi-
sions had come up to relieve the "youngsters."
180 The, Story of the Rainbow Divmott
The 82nd had gone in and battered at Romagne
and Cunel without success. The First Division
.went over to the left, captured Hill 212 in dash-
ing style, and found itself up against the Krem-
hilde Stellung.
Thus the Argonne-Meuse offensive stood on
October 18, more than two weeks after its launch-
ing. It had slowed up ; it had almost stopped.
The Rainbow Division, having waited for a
week in this hell-hole of a Bois de Montfaucori,
with the 32nd's efforts just ahead of it bringing
the German barrages on its impotent head and
the filth of an old battlefield soaking into its
clothes and disposition, now got the word. It
took over the brilliant but tired First Division's
line north of Fleville and Exermont and got to
work. It was in the great Argonne drive at
last.
^t 4l ^t 'i^ ^fe 4^ 4^
^^* ^^* ^^* ^^* ^^* ^^^ ^^^
The enemy's stubborn defense of Hill 288 and
the Cote de Chatillon had held up the advance of
the whole army. The Rainbow's part in the ac-
tual hard fighting in the Meuse- Argonne opera-
tion lasted only two days, for in that time it
Through the 'Argovne to Sedan 181
broke through the defense of these hills and cap-
tured both of them.
The capture of the Cote de Chatillon was
called, at the time it occurred, "one of the most
brilliant operations of the whole war." It may;
have been called that because the effect of it was
so immediately productive of disaster to the Ger-
mans, and because their backward movement at
once doubled its speed, and because everybody
was so happy about it. For when Cote de Cha-
tillon fell before the attack of the Rainbow Divi-
sion, the deadlock on the Kremhilde Stellung
ended. But the fighting there was not as des-
perate and deadly as on the Ourcq in July.
The 168th from Iowa and the 167th from Ala-
bamia started the attack on the two hills on the
morning of October 14. The lowans' position in
the line brought Hill 288 and the Cote de Cha-
tillon directly in their path.
One may almost guess from the briefness of
the battle that there was little about it of the
working out of a complicated tactical plan — ^that,
on the contrary, it was the recklessness of the
assault and the performance of individual deeds
132 The Story of the Rainbow Division
of courage and daring that won the fight for the
Rainbow. And that actually was the case, ex-
cept that there was a tactical plan to the extent
that the dashing assault was decided upon (after
every other sort of tactical plan had been con-
sidered) as the best plan of all.
You may best know how the hills fell by know-
ing what the men did who took them from the
Germans.
For instance, with D Company of the 168th,
under a lieutenant named Spalding, fighting
from the Bois de Romagne to the southeast of
the Cote de Chatillon, and with hot machine-gun
fire sweeping down from a trench on the right of
the hill, another lieutenant named Ely went over
with about half a platoon and cleaned out the
whole trench, capturing twenty Germans.
Tuilleries Farm was in the way of any ad-
vance to Hill 288 — a vicious nest of machine-
guns. Lieutenant Breslin of A Company went
up there with a patrol, captured the guns and
the Germans and brought them all back.
They had to get 288 before they could get
Chatillon, and the taking of 288 made Chatillon
Through the Argorme to Sedan 188
harder to capture because all the Germans who
possibly could ran across from one hill to the
other as soon as the Rainbows came upon them.
Companies A, B and C of the 168th had reached
la Mussarde Farm at the brow of the hill, ad-
vancing in combat groups with everything in fine
shape, and then the Germans had opened up with
all they had — ^machine-guns, Austrian 88's, and
minenwerfers. The Rainbow men made one dash
for the hedgerow around the farm, and the Ger-
mans scattered like rabbits and galloped down
the hill and across the open to the foot of the
Cote de Chatillon.
A messenger on his way up to the line with a
message for Captain WiUiam R. Witherall, then
commanding the First Battalion, was knocked
flat by a German bullet that hit a pair of German
field-glasses hanging around his neck over his
chest. The message told Witherall to go ahead
and take the Cote de Chatillon.
The barrage started at ten a. m., and at ten-
thirty Witherall's men started out of the Bois de
Romagne toward the Cote.. The first men to
come out were killed in their tracks. Watching
184 The Story of the Rainbow Division
carefully the woods across the clearing at the foot
of the hill, the captain noticed that no fire at all
seemed to be coming from one little patch of it —
that, in fact, the Germans seemed to have turned
their backs upon it.
So he started a platoon of C Company across
with Lieutenant Miller. From farther off to the
right they came out toward this patch of woods
at a dead run— twenty men— and not a German
^chine-gun ope„ed!p.
With Miller's platoon now behind what seemed
to be the Germans' main point of resistance
around the foot of the Cote de Chatillon, things
began to move more smoothly. Witherall saw
a little group of machine-gunners training their
piece upon some H Company men who were
coming into Tuileries Farm. He leveled his
pistol and brought down two of them, and the
rest ducked for cover.
Crossing the clearing himself and getting over
safely, the battalion commander, rounding the
back of a big dugout in the woods, came upon
Corporal Pruett of C Company, dancing like a
madman on the top of the dugout, waving a Ger-
Through the Argorme to Sedan 186
man "potato-masher" grenade and yelling, *Tve
got *em. I've got 'emT'
He had 'em, right enough. Sixty-four jGer-
man soldiers and four officers were cowering in
that dugout, in mortal terror lest Pruett should
throw the grenade. They hegged Witherall to
call him off, which he did, and they all went back
as Pruett's prisoners. They made this former
Iowa school-teacher a sergeant on the spot, and
later he got a commission and the Distinguished
Service Cross.
Meanwhile B Company was still in the Ro^
magne woods under direct fire from the machine-
guns that C Company had escaped. Sergeant
Clark was sent with four men to round up the
Boche who were holding up B Company. These
five lowans silenced one machine-gun with rifle
fire, and killed the entire crew of another.
Whereupon B Company came out of the Ro-
magne woods, and lounged across the clearing to
the Cote de Chatillon, with their guns slung over
their shoulders as though they were taking a
leisurely hike on a peaceful country road.
With the men scattered through the woods
186 The Story of the Rainbow Division
and around the German dugouts hunting for
prisoners, word came up that the Germans were
getting together for a counter-attack. By that
time the , Alabamians of the 167th had come up
on the left, B and C companies of the 168th were
reformed, and the Germans were beaten back.
The Alabamians had had a tough fight in an-
other part of the Bois de Romagne. They were
facing the left slope of the Cote de Chatillon,
with their third battalion, under Major Morris,
in the front and the other two battalions in sup-
port. Before they took their side of the Cote,
however, joining up with the lowans, all three
battalions were in the fight — the First under
Major Jeorg, and the Second under Captain
Flowers.
Private Neibors of Idaho, an M Company
man of the 167th, in this fight won the Congres-
sional Medal of Honor for one of the most as-
tounding exploits of the war. Neibors was
wounded and left behind when his platoon rolled
back before the ferocity of the German resist-
ance, so that the Germans captured him. And
that night, before they could get him out of the
Throiigh the Argorme to Sedan 187
zone of the fighting and hack to a prison camp,
he overpowered his guard and got his pistol, then
rounded up nine more Germans and marched
them all hack into the Rainbow's lines.
During the German counter-attack Sergeant
Atkinson won himself a Distinguished Service
Cross. He was a member of the regimental
Headquarters Company, serving in the Stokes
Mortar platoon. Being out ahead of his platoon
and seeing the Germans starting forward, Ser-
geant Atkinson had to think and act quickly.
Ordinarily a Stokes Mortar is fired from a firm
base built solidly into the ground. But Atkin-
son had no time to build a base for his gun, so he
held it between his knees and fired the big mortar
bombs point-blank into the enemy. Atkinson's
work did probably more than any other one thing
to break up the German counter-attack on the
Cote de Chatillon.
The strong-points on the Kremhilde Stellung
were now in the hands of the American Army.
The back of the German resistance in the Ar-
gonne had been broken at last. The great Ar-
gonne drive could move on now. It did move
/
138 The Story of the Rainboto Division
on, starting November 1, with the greatest artil-
lery bombardment in history, excepting neither
the bombardments in the Champagne in July or
in the Argonne on September 26.
The Rainbow infantry was relieved by the
Second Division on October 31, but the Rainbow
artillery stayed to help with the bombardment
next morning. This included Grcneral Gatley's
whole 67th Artillery Brigade from Minnesota,
Illinois, Indiana and Maryland, besides the 150th
machine-gun battalion from Wisconsin, the 151st
from Georgia, and the 149th from Pennsylvania.
These machine-gunners and artillerymen plowed
holes in the withermg German defenses that the
Germans never were and never would have been
able to patch up.
Having dealt the staggering blow assigned to
it, the infantry of the Rainbow was shifted over
to the left and given a running start toward the
city that had been the goal of the American Army
since September 26 — Sedan!
They say an important telephone message flew
quietly around to the First, the 77th and the
Through the Argorme to Sedan 189
Rainbow Divisions on November 1. The mes-
sage was "Sedan regardless of boundaries!"
This meant that each of these three divisions
was to try to get to Sedan as rapidly as it could,
paying no attention to the limits of its sector,
squeezing over into another division's sectors if
it could move more quickly by that method ; but,
above all, to get there.
They were to take for themselves the "right
of way," like fire-fighting companies tearing up
a busy street to a big blaze. The Germans were
now retreating rapidly all along the line.
The Rainbow Division, struggling northward
through the terribly wrecked country, found it-
self up against almost impassable barriers* In
desperation Division Headquarters called for the
Rainbow's "Fighting Engineers," the South
Carolinians and the Californians who had fought
as infantry on the Ourcq, were ready to fight as
infantry against the Cote de Chatillon, and were
now hiking as infantry toward Sedan. In the
situation that now confronted the Rainbow the
engineers were wasting their time as infantry.
At midnight on November 4, having gotten as
140 The Story of the Rainbow Divmon
far as Authe, Division Headquarters learned
that the causeway across the Bar Valley, north of
Brieulles, had been demolished by the Germans
in their retreat. No traffic — ^not even men on foot
— could get across it. The causeway had been
about one thousand feet long, crossing a marshy
creek, and had consisted of a "fill" fifteen feet
high. In this artificial road the Germans had
blown mine craters every seventy-five feet; in
some cases the holes went far below the surface
of the original creek bottom.
The "Fighting Engineers" discarded their in-
fantry equipment and reassembled their engi-
neering tools. It took them almost all morning
to get their stuff ready, for they had been fight-
ing as infantry so long they had almost lost track
of the implements of their own profession.
With Colonel J. M. Johnson and Lieutenant-
Colonel W. F. R. Johnson commanding the regi-
ment, the engineers worked day and night across
the Bar Valley. The First Battalion — all South
Carolinians — ^under Major A. V. Hooks, built
the main pass across the marsh. Major Hooks
had a heavy cold and a high fever when his men
Through the Argorme to Sedan 141
began the work, but he stayed by them and com-
pleted the job at ten o'clock on the night of
November 6. At that hour the big trucks began
coming across, pulled from the other side by
gangs of soldiers with long ropes.
On ahead of the Bar Valley bridges had been
demolished at Petite Armoises and Sy, and two
bridges in the forest to the south of Sy had been
blown up. On these they put to work the Second
Battalion from California, imder Major E. B.
Hayden. Half of his men worked with salvaged
German engineering tools.
Some of the engineers got one day's rations in
three days. All of them worked imder gas and
high-explosive bombardments from the artillery
covering the German retreat. And they went
on, filling up holes in the roads, throwing bridges
across ravines and streams, until, in Harricourt,
while the Germans were still in the other end of
the town, they pushed their repairs and lines of
communication up to the Meuse River. They
made reconnaissances of the Meuse, looking for
possible sites for bridges, two hundred yards in
advance of the infantry outposts.
142 The Story of the Bainborv Division
And what, all this time, of the First and 77th
Divisions, to whom had come as well as to the
Rainbow, the order, "Sedan regardless of boun-
daries" ?
As they had started off on November 1, the
42nd had had the extreme left, the 77th had been
in the center and the First had been on the right.
But as they began nearing the River Meuse, the
First had begun to push over to the left. The
Meuse flowed northwest, and merely to reach the
river bank due north of the point from which it
had started, would find the First Division still
several kilometers away from Sedan with no way
to reach it except to follow the bank of the
stream in a northwesterly direction. This the
First had started to do.
Of course, it ran into the 77th. The New
Yorkers were very tired. The start of the "race
for Sedan" had found the First comparatively
fresh, for the Rainbow had relieved it back at
Exermont in the middle of October, but it had
found the 77th in the midst of the same battle it
had been fighting for many days. So it was little
trouble for the First to speed up a bit, cut di-
Through the Argorme to Sedan 143
rectly across the path of the weary 77th, and
head northwest along the river toward Sedan.
Now, the path of the 42ndy rough as it was,
led directly to Sedan.
It was on the night of November 6 that a
patrol of the First Division, spouting out ahead
to feel the division's way through a country that
might be still enemy-infested, took its last
"prisoner of war.'*
A lieutenant had command of the patrol.
They had crawled up under the cover of a stone
wall near Beaumeil Farm, about thirty kilometers
from Sedan. The outposts of the 165th Infantry
— ^the old 69th New York — ^were at that moment
in Wadlaincourt, a suburb of Sedan on the
heights overlooking the city across the river, but
the patrol leader did not know that.
AU he saw in the gathering dusk was an im-
portant looking officer walking around, attired
in what looked like a gray cape and a visored
cap with a soft crown, not unlike those the Crown
Prince wore in his pictures.
Stealthily the lieutenant led out his patrol and
eagerly they leaped upon the important looking
144 The Story of the Bairibow Division
officer and made him a prisoner. And they got
him back to a brigade headquarters of the First
Division, before Brigadier-General Douglas
MacArthur, commanding the 84th Brigade of the
Rainbow Division, could convince them that it
was himself and not an officer of the German
Army.
And no American division ever really reached
Sedan. The Rainbow's patrols were the first
into Wadlaincourt, and then, on November 7, all
the Americans were withdrawn from that point
and the French were the first to enter the city.
With the Rainbow out of the line in the region
of Buzancy, eleven o'clock of the morning of
November 11 arrived, and the war was over.
PART TWO
ii
CHAPTER IX
ON TO GERMANY
"Germany, heyl" growled the Rainbow
doughboy, giving his ragged breeches a hitch.
"How niany kilomets is that?''
And that was all he cared about it.
That is to say, that was all he let anybody else
know he cared about it. It was just the Rain-
bow doughboy's way. Outwardly nothing im-
pressed him any more, not even the tremendous
fact that the old Rainbow was actually going to
march to the country of the ancient enemy, as
part of the American Army of Occupation.
The division moved from Buzancy to Brande-
ville, getting into that half-ruined town the day
after the Germans got out of it. There it waited
until November 20, being newly equipped with
clothes, shoes and puttees, and getting its trans-
portation into shape. There, too, its old com-
147
148 The Story of the Rainbow Division
manding general, Charles T, Menoher, left it,
and General C. A. F. Flagler took command.
General Menoher had led the Rambow througU
all its battles.
Divisions that were not going into Germany
were stripped of motor trucks, touring cars,
motor-cycles and side-cars to speed the Rainbow
on the high roads to the Rhine. The crippled,
battered things that had toiled behind the ad*
vance on every front, that had broken their backs
and ruptured their engines to bring up food and
ammunition, were sent limping back to that
happy hunting ground of all worn-out army
equipment — the salvage dump. The German
army had planned to march into Paris wearing
brand-new spiked helmets. The Rainbow would
march into Germany, all in holiday duds.
It had a terrible time for a while, though, with
its new pants. Some muddled quartermaster had
sent the division a lot of clothes built for an army
of fat men, and the stuff had to be sent back,
while the division waited.
But on the morning of November 20 it started.
Bugles had awakened it before daybreak. All
On to Germany 149
trucks had to be loaded and ready to start by
eight o'clock. Actually they were ready at seven
o'clock.
Brandeville, Stenay, Dun-sur-Meuse, all
slowly were emptied of soldiers as the army from
America streamed toward the north and east —
herds of giant trucks, queues of plodding sol-
diers, endless files of mingled men, horses and
field-guns — the artillery ; and the touring cars of
staflp officers weaving through traffic tangles in
the villages and jumping out upon the high-
roads at top speed.
Nothing of the dreariness of war was in the
land, unless you took a second look in at the
doors of the deserted staflp offices in Brandeville,
and mused afterward over what you had seen.
In front of the smoldering ashes of the log fires
the returned exiles of Brandeville had been
standing, surveying the old homes and preparmg
to start life again; wondering, probably, where
the tables and chairs were coming from, what to
have for lunch and where in the world to get it.
For Brandeville had come back home.
They had been standing aroimd like that all
150 The Story of the Rainbow Division
morning while the men were clearing out the
telephones and office equipment and packing up
the trucks — ^standing in the comers out of the
way of the rush and bustle, watching and waiting*
It was peace weather, too, with a cloudless sky
and brilliant sunshine that warmed you through
and made beautiful sharp etchings of the roads
ahead and the valleys below and the autimm-
tinted woods on the hills.
Right at the start the trip to the Rhine was
assuming the nature of a vacational jaunt
through a New England coimtryside, let us say
— in the "Feel" of the thing, if you get the mean-
ing. Same scenery, same sort of roads that you
had been seeing during months of trips around
the rear areas of rural France. But this was the
other side of a world that had been divided for
four years — divided as though by a great wall so
that neither side could look over and see what the
other side was doing. Here, suddenly, was the
other side, disclosed to view mile by mile.
Exhilaration grew out of this situation. The
foot-soldiers felt it. On their backs were the
same heavy packs they had carried on night
On to Germany 151
marches through rain and mud toward a morn-
ing that would bring a battle — when no prospect
stretched before them but more night marches
and more battles, more rain and more mud. But
this was bright sunny daylight, and there lay
ahead good billets, sound slee|[, leisurely going
— and the River Rhine.
So they were a fine-looking bunch as they
swarmed through the valleys and over the hills —
fresh-faced, clear-eyed, with a pep instead of a
slog to their gait.
At noon they reached Montmedy, the halting
place for the day.
On the outskirts of the town was the big Ger-
man railhead for which the Allied "heavies" had
been feeling for weeks. Broad stretches of track
were interlaced there with trains of empty freight
cars standing on the rails. Through the open
door of one was a glimpse of a big printing press
and on the outside of the car some doughboy had
printed with a piece of chalk "Office of the Daily
Cabbage.'' Across the road in a fenced-in area
full of low frame buildings where supplies for a
great army had been distributed, smoke tendrils
154 The Story of the Rainbow Division
the ce^ater of the city. Little girls and boys, bear-
ing themselves as though they had on their best
clothes, straggled in the same direction. Women
came forth, fussily adjusting their puff -sleeved
jackets. Everybody's shoes, well worn and
wrinkled, were painfully polished. A sense de-
veloped in the air that a municipal ceremony of
some sort was impending.
There, in fact, was the reason for the apparent
stolidity in the greeting to the Americans. It
wasn't stolidity at all. It was a bit of embarrass-
ment, like the embarrassment of a young actress
making her debut. Montmedy was making her
debut to-day. She had been dead for four years,
and to-day she was being born again. Up around
the Maire — ^the City Hall of Montmedy — a
crowd stood, stirring with suppressed excitement
whenever an automobile or a truck sped around
the corner. A Gendarme was there, keeping
open a broad lane leading up to the door of the
Maire, and his bright blue uniform, his crisp
mustache, the swell of his chest and his lofty strut
and wave of the hand were pleasant symbols of
a long-lost power regained.
On to Germany 155
Montmedy was waiting to welcome the Presi-
dent of France and Mme. Poincare.
The Rainbow Division straightway forgot any
little disappointment at its failure to create a
furore and proceeded to become citizens of Mont'
medy. When the Chief of France and his wife
arrived, his redeemed children and their Ameri-
can redeemers would be there, side by side, to
greet him. The doughboys, who got their billet-
ing arrangements straightened out quickly,
hustled down to the Maire and joined the crowd.
Two military policemen from the Virginia organ-
ization in the Rainbow Division took some of the
gendarme's precious responsibility away from
him and kept American motor traffic moving
through the crowd and up the hill. The silk-
hatted City Council raked up an American
major-general. General Henry P. Allen, the
commander of the 90th Division, from Texas and
Oklahoma, which was coming to Montmedy witK
the Rainbow, and stood him in their midst on the
Maire steps under the big sign, "Rathaus," which
the Germans had painted over the door.
President Poincare and Mme. Poincare ar-
158 The Story of the Bainboto Division
hugged and kissed the little boys. She gave the
coat of the President of France a gentle tug,
and he, too, bade the Mayor and Council desist
for a moment while he pinched the little girls'
cheeks and patted the little boys* heads, bowing
low over the flowers and turning them over to a
general, who turned them over to a colonel, who
gave them to the President's chauff em*, who put
them in the automobile.
Luncheon was waiting on a long table in a big
hall upstairs — ^more food than the folks of Mont-
medy had seen in one place since the Germans
came. The President of France had brought it
in his private train that was carrying him and
Mme. Poincare from city to city in reclaimed
France. Not only was he taking with him the
food for banquets of thanksgiving in the re-
deemed towns and cities, but he was taking his
own cook, his own chef and his own waitresses.
The last the Rainbow Division saw of the
President of France and his wife, they were trail-
ing upstairs at the head of the procession of
happy Councilmen, with the generals and col-
onels and the American General, going to lunch.
On to Germany 169
Whereupon the Rainbow Division spread out
through the city, for next day it would be moving
on into Belgium, and there was no time to lose
seeing the sights and gathering souvenirs.
Every store was full of them, crowding up to
the little counters behind which whole families —
from grandparents to grandchildren — ^had mob-
ilized to handle the sudden rush of trade. Long,
lanky boys from Kansas and Indiana bought
ruthlessly of stocks of feminine-looking frip-
peries. Stores that had little supplies of picture
postcards, paper and envelopes were cleaned out
in a half hour.
«
For the first time since the A. E. F. became
an A. E. F., German money began passing back
and forth in transactions between American sol-
diers and the citizens of Europe. The shop-
keepers of Montmedy had a lot of German
money — not a lot, either, but more than they had
of any other money. So the doughboys got back
handfuls of marks and pfennigs in change and
went on their way rejoicing. More souvenirs 1
Uptown was the "Deutsches Theatre An Der
Westfront." A new show was going on insid<
160 The Story of the Rainbow DixjUion
a good show now. The old one had been playing
there for four years and it was a rotten perform-
ance. The world had stood it as long as it could,
then it had "egged" the actors and the whole
stock company was beating it somewhere ofF
through Belgium.
But this new one was a peach. The sounds
that came through the wide open windows on the
second floor made folks on the street stop in their
tracks and shuffle their feet. Above the ragtime
lilt of a piano came the roar of an American sol-
dier chorus, "Take Me to Dat Darktown Strut-
ters' Balll" Four soldiers, leaning comfortably
over the withered flower boxes on the balcony
rails, sang the song out into the street.
A red-haired boy from Alabama was up there
at a big grand piano, swaying himself and his
fingers up and down the keys, and the chorus
was crowded around him five rows deep. He was
a wizard, the red-haired boy. He sent thrills up
and down your back and made you stand aroimd
and shake your shoulders when you knew you
ought to be examining this German theater and
marveling at it.
On to Germany 161
This must have been a sort of club room for
the German soldiery, where they assembled be-
tween the acts and sat around drinking beer and
singing, while somebody played the piano. The
beer tables were still there, though some of them
were overturned and smashed, and the floors
were littered with debris. Every window in the
place was smashed — ^not from bombing or shell-
ing by the Allies, for the windows of houses in
the town were still intact. Just before they left
Montmedy the Boche must have fired through
the windows from 'the street, for there were bul-
let holes through the plaster in the back walls
and splintered glass lay all over the floor inside.
Downstairs was the theater. It was a per-
fectly arranged little place, with seats for about
six hundred, a good-sized stage, a gallery with a
place where they probably worked a spotlight,
and signs all over the walls "Rauchen Verbotenl'*
The walls were paneled and tinted, the wooden
strips a dark mahogany color and the panels a
pale sort of orange. From the high ceiling hung
clusters of crystal lights, shaded with orange silk.
All this decorative artistry revealing a chapter
162 The Story of the Rainbow Division
in the life of the German Army, now retiring to
its own borders in shame, meant nothing to the
lAmericans upstairs. For them there were more
thriUs in standing around the red-haired Ala-
bamian, who could make a German piano speak
English.
The Maryland trench-mortar battery officers
had a dinner that night. Their billet-hostess had
joyfully assented to a proposal that included the
turning over of her dining-room and her table
service for the evening, the cooking of the dinner
and the usual cleaning up processes. All thq
officers were to furnish was the food, which, in
Montmedy, was the main thing, the other details
merely trailing along as pleasant accompani-
ments, but not necessities.
And so they dined in not a little state in deliv-
ered Montmedy, on the second floor of the big
house on the left and down the hill about two
blocks, above the "Deutsches Theatre an Der
.Westfront." On clear, still nights a few months
ago the billet-hostess and her husband and
daughters could probably have heard the sweet
chorus of "Hi-lee, Hi-lo" from the stage down
On to Germany 168
there, and caught the faint perfume of limburger
as the skmny Dutchman hit the fat Dutchman
in the stomach with a board.
It was a great dinner. There was tender
steak, fresh from the quartermaster, and fried
potatoes, fresh from the conunissary, and baked
beans, fresh from the cans. And there were
coffee and white bread and jam made of whole
strawberries.
With the dishes cleared away and everybody
fixed with fresh cigarettes, the billet-hostess
tiptoed into the dining-room with a scared smile
and fairly flew at the opposite wall with out-
stretched arms, as though she wanted to get there
before somebody tagged her and made her "it."
Now this was an ordinary-looking waU. It
had a pale sort of paper on it and a few very
tasteful etchings, but you could have stared at it
for hours and never have seen anything about it
worth running at as one would run at the last
hot fish-cake on the free lunch coimter. All of \
which establishes the fact that when Shakespeare
said "the walls have ears'* he was only partly
right. This wall had something else.
164 The Story of the Bainbotv Division
The lady, who was very thin and small, with a
worried countenance on which were several moles
trimmed with long, curling hairs, passed her right
hand over a spot in this wall, which opened be-
fore the officers' eyes. From the opening she
took a bottle, blew some dust from it, and closed
the wall so that it again looked like any other
wall. Whereupon she tiuned around and ten-
derly planted the bottle on the table and stepped
back a pace, twisting her hands in her apron and
murmuring.
It was a square, fat bottle, and it bore an old
label, "Cura9ao, Triple-sec." She explained that
it had been hidden in the wall for four years,
away from the German officers who had lived in
her house. This was the time to bring it out, she
thought, when "les Americains," for whom noth-
ing was too good, were her guests.
They told her to invite in her husband and her
daughter, and for the rest of the evening they
sat, all three, on the edge of the divan — the old
gentleman with one fat cigar between his fingers
and f oiu* sticking out of the breast pocket of his
coat — ^gifts from the officers — and the lady
On to Gemumy 165
and her daughter sipping the cura9ao they had
hidden for four years, stroking the moles on their
chins and listening with rapture to the most awe-
inspiring attempts to draw harmonies out of
"Picture To-night a Field of Snowy White" and
*T)own by the Old Mill Stream" that had ever
been heard. And when a member of the party
stood up and recited the first four lines of "The
Night Before Christmas," supplying what he
had forgotten with extemporized gibberish and
wild gestures, they apparently thought their
house was being honored with the presence of a
great American actor and probably secretly
stored the scene away in their memories to thrill
future generations of Montmedy,
Next morning, through more bright autumn
sunshine, trains of motor trucks crossed the bor-
der into Belgium, full of young men who waved
their winter caps, and roared "Knock the Rhine,"
which, spelled N-a-c-h and pronounced with a
gargle, was a perfectly good German expression
of triumph.
CHAPTER X
BELGIUM LAUGHS AGAIN
Belgium came out of her cellars, bringing her
ancient wines and her precious bits of brass and
tapestry, when the American Army came
through on the highroads to the Rhine. As prop-^
erly as she could, Belgium made merry. She
had almost forgotten how — she had entirely for-
gotten how — ^to make merry, as Americans know
the term.
But she got what merriment she could out of
talking about her four and a half years of slav-
ery to the men of the Rainbow Division. She
could talk about those years now, because they
were gone and the slavery was over. And the
wine that was too good for the Germans, and the
hospitality that the Germans demanded with
threatening bayonets (and thought tliey were
getting) came up from the caves that the Amer-
166
Belgiwrw Laughs Again 167
icans might make merry and teach Belgimn to
laugh again.
That is what the Rainbow Division did in the
beautiful old citv of Arlon — ^it retaught Belgium
how to laugh.
First, though, let me tell of the city of Virton,
Belgium, close to the border between France and
Belgium, which was the first city in Belgium the
Rainbow Division saw on its march to the Rhine.
In Virton it came upon the last of the German
Army in Belgium — four hundred wounded Ger-
man soldiers in the hospital there, with the hos-
pital's full complement of German medical offi-
cers and German niu'ses.
They were the first Germans to live under the
flags of the Allies. From the tower of the big
hospital were flying, on the day the Rainbow
Division was in and around Virton, the flags of
Prance, Great Britain, Belgium and America.
In the streets the men of the Rainbow met
German medical officers. The situation seemed
to produce a queer, sudden mixture of emotion
in both Americans and Germans, and the Ger-
mans seemed to be surer of themselves than the
168 The Story of the Rainbow Division
Americans. Probably the Germans were more
certain of their defeat than the Americans were
that they believed they were defeated. At any
rate, the Germans bowed and the Americans
simply stared.
Heaven knows the men of the Rainbow Divi-
sion had seen enough Germans. They knew
what German soldiers looked like, dead and ative
— or, rather, first alive and then dead. Their
ideas of what to do when they saw a German
soldier, who was neither womided nor a prisoner,
included most of the things the world puts under
the heading of "Decisive Action,'* but it certainly
did not include polite bows. Until Virton they
had seen German soldiers only on battlefields —
most of the battlefields of the four years of the
war. They had never seen them shopping in the
streets of a quiet city, carrying bundles in their
arms.
So that it was a queer thing to watch the prog-
ress of the young German soldier walking from
shop to shop in Virton, and finally striking off
up the broad, tree-aisled street to the hospital —
a homey, comfortable street like a shady avenue
Belgmm Laughs Again 169
in an American college town. He wore a neat-
fitting uniform of field-gray and a gray cap like
our fatigue cap, with a black patent-leather visor.
He was young and slim, with a fresh pink face
and very erect.
Group after group of our American dough-
boys he passed — strolling along on their way to
the regular afternoon "parley'* with French
shop-keepers — tall, lean boys from the West and
South; short, stout, snappy little fellows from
the East; Americans from all over the United
States, talking about home, old fights, the com-
ing arrival in Germany, how much money they
had, what the cooks were "coming across with,"
how they had bawled out the Sergeant that morn-
ing and would do it again if he got gay, and what
they were going to buy.
And whatever they were talking about, they
stopped it when they saw the young German
soldier with the bundles.
His head was up and his eyes ahead like a man
on parade, but as he passed the American groups
he turned his eyes toward them, inclined his head
170 The Story of the Rainbow DixjUion
slightly with a munnur that was unintelligible,
and passed on.
Now, apparently, those groups of Americans
thought no more of returning that bow than they
would have thought of returning the bow of one
of the camels in a circus parade.
"For Pete's sake, did you see that bird bow
his head?''
"Yeah — ^whad d'ye know about that? Mus'
think he knows us I"
"He prob'ly knows ole Slim here. Prob'ly
tended bar back home in some rathskeller where
old Slim used t' hang out."
"Yeah, and he can take me back to that ole
rathskeller toot-sweet if he wants to. Jus' so he
don't put no knockout drops in my beer, that's
aU."
"Won't be any beer when you get back there.
Slim. All be drinkin' prune juice or somethin'."
"Tell yuh what I bet about these Goimans,"
said a little black-eyed soldier with curly black
hair and a high curved nose. "Bet yuh they've
been told to try to get in good with the American
Belgium Laughs Again 171
Army so people won't believe these stories about
kill^V babies an' boinin' choiches."
/v'ell, they gotta do somethin' more'n bow to
get in good with me. Cap'n says don't frat-nize
with 'em, and y' ain't goin' to see me frat-nizin'."
"I wouldn't trust ole Slim if one of 'em says
*Slim, come on in an' have a stein o' Pils'ner
beer.' "
"Well, now, mebbe," Slim began — ^and then
they were out of earshot and heading toward a
postcard shop that had a window full of pictures
of Virton.
If the orders in the retreating German Army
bade those left behind to "try to get in good" with
the American Army, they were certainly useless
orders, so far as the Rainbow Division was con-
cerned. In Virton an American second lieuten-
ant put a German medical lieutenant out of his
billet. The German had lived there nearly four
years — as long as the hospital had been in opera-
tion. He had German pictures on the walls —
scenes of the *Tatherland," groups of soldiers,
girls, and so on — and he had made a homelike
place of the room, with an electric light at the
172 The Story of the Bambotv DixHriofi
head of the bed and a reading lamp on the table
and all his books and records in orderly; cabinets
around the walls.
But the town major having in charge the list-
ing and distribution of the billets did not take
into account the fact that any part of the German
Army was still in Virton. So far as he was con-
cerned the German Army had gone away from
there and was still going. So this billet in the
home of a French woman came to be listed among
the billets available for officers of the Rainbow
Division.
They say the German was scribbling away at
his table, telling the folks he'd be home soon, or
something, when an American soldier, the lieu-
tenant's orderly, came bumping through the
door, bending under a bedding roll as big as a
piano, and dumped it down on the floor with an
awful thud. Behind him came the young Ameri-
can officer with a musette bag over his shoulder
and a suitcase. Behind the American officer
came the lady of the house.
The German rose, dropping his inky pen on
the paper — ^plainly astoimded.
Belgium Laughs Again 173
"I think this is my billet," said the American
coolly, picking a comer occupied by the Ger-
man's spare boots to deposit his bag and suitcase,
and removing the boots in the process. "Yes?"
said the German. He spoke English well. He
hesitated a second. "I have lived here for four
years," he ventured. "Yes?" said the American.
Then to his orderly, "Any water in that pitcher,
Harry? If there isn't, ask the Madam to get
some, will you? I want to wash up."
Without another word the German left, and
came back with his own orderly, and they both
proceeded to move out the German's house fur-
nishings, while the American sloshed his face and
head and neck in the cold water, brushed his
teeth and hair, and distributed his razor and toilet
articles around on the wash stand. Not a word
of conversation passed between the American
and the German until, as the latter was leaving
with the last of his stuff, the American looked
up from a manicuring operation, and said,
"Sorry, old scout 1" The German closed the door
softly, with never a reply.
Wads of fruics from the parts of France the
/
174 The Story of the RdnbotD DixHsion
Germans had not reached piled into the little
money boxes of the Belgian storekeepers, who
searched their poor stocks of goods again and
again to find things that the Americans wanted.
The money of their own comitry was returning
to them and the marks and pfennigs they had
accumulated during the German occupation went
into the pockets of our doughboys.
They were poor enough stocks of goods.
Heaven knows, what with the ravages of the
Boche in the last hours before he left. But as
though they were business folk who had just com-
pleted a big deal, American soldiers and Virton
citizens sat down to dinner together that night
in many a Virton kitchen or dining-room, and
savory broiled steak and hot French fried pota-
toes right from the company's cook, lay in lordly
state on hot platters before them, and Madam
poured the coffee and sat down in the midst of
the young Americans, not understanding a word
of the jokes they roared at, or the stories they
listened to so eagerly. But they were happy —
Madam and Monsieur, and the blushing Made-
moiselles— in contemplation of the serene-faced.
Belgium Laughs Again 175
clear-eyed boys from America, and of their hon-
est laughter and sincere interest in Madam and
Monsieur, and the blushing Mademoiselles, and
of their shameless appetites for food.
From Brandeville through Montmedy and
Virton and beyond. Northern France and South-
ern Belgium had seemed strangely well-pre-
served for having been war countries for four
years. Even near Montmedy, supply depot on
the Germans' main army raikoad Une between
Longuyon and Sedan, which had been within
range of our great naval guns during the last
weeks of the war, the earth was but little torn
with shell-fire and the villages scarcely at all.
Over this country the hastily-formed armies of
France had fallen back during the fall of 1914,
offering little resistance to the steady, thoroughly
planned advance of the German force, and the
villages and fields here lay just as they were when
the horses of the Uhlans had pranced into them
and they were claimed for Germany.
Before noon, though, rolling onward through
Belgiimi, the Rainbow Division came upon the
war's first ruins — the wreckage wrought when
176 The Story of the Rmnboto Division
black despair was first settling over Europe, by
guns so big that the people blanched with terror
at the very mention of them.
They were ordinary ruins, just like those tiie
Rainbow had left in France. People walked
among them trundling wheel-barrows or pulling
little carts, and most of them were women — old
women. There were a few children who stood
and stared at the slow colmnn of horses, wagons,
motors, guns and men. They did not wave their
hands or clap them. What these tiny Belgium
children knew about soldiers didn't call for wav-
ings or clappings of hands. Here and there an
older girl, standing by a tangled pile of rocks
that had been her home, waved one hand steadily
as though she had that day set that hand aside
for waving purposes and no other. The older
girls understood the slow moving coliman of olive-
drab.
Shortly afternoon the Rainbow Divijsion
reached the city of Arlon.
Crowning a broad hill, unobscured from view
for a mile along the broad, shady road, Arlon lay
shining in the sun like descriptions of old Jeru-
Belgiv/m JLaughs Again 177
salem — ^^Vith tow'rs of gold and diadems of
enow/* Old Rainbow veterans, starved through
long months of fighting among wrecks of towns,
for the sight of a big city, roimded the curve of
the road and saw it. "Wot th' ,'' they said,
and waxed speechless.
All day the Rainbow rolled into Arlon, and
Division Headquarters was established in the
center of the city in the great government build-
ings on the Place, where in some of the rooms the
silk-covered furniture, tapestried walls and rich,
thick carpets were unhurt, and in others were
worn and slashed and heaped up with dirty,
worn-out German gas masks and abandoned
ammunition cases. It was beautiful, the interior
of this great building — ^with the beauty of an
empty conch-shell. Hand-carved cases that had
held precious bronzes were opened and empty,
the faces of richly carved old "Grandfather
clocks" were empty, the walls bare of pictures,
the heavy tables bare of covering.
American automobiles standing in the Place
were wonderful museimis of new things for the
children, who clambered into them and bounced
178 The Story of the Rainbow Division
up and down on the cushioned seats, wiggled llie
chitches and brakes and begged to be taken for
rides. The humblest looking doughboy, who
probably hadn't drawn a new pair of shoes and
Icggii^s 7^U And who had lost a couple of but-
tons from his overcoat during the morning mrrch,
was eyed, as he walked past the shops, like a
million dollar movie star, and wealthy old Arlon-
ites struggled to think of enough English to ask
him to dinner, ending the struggle by dragging
him off.
There was a host of dinner parties in Arlon
that night, furnished forth, as these parties in
redeemed France and Belgium always are, with
some things brought by the soldiers in their own
hands and some things brought from the dark
cellars by the citizenry. For a dinner party in
Arlon, or anywhere else in Belgiimi, was a diflS-
cult problem for a Belgian to handle alone. All
the butter, eggs, sugar and meat that the retreat-
ing German army could lay its hands on, it had
taken away when it left Belgium. Sometimes
the Germans had asked the price, and sometimes
they hadn't, though nearly always they had laid
Belgium Laughs Again 179
down a few marks, so that the transaction would
be. only semi-robbery.
But the Belgians supplied the wines from their
hiding places in the cellars, and from the same
hiding places they brought up their best old silver
table services and their snowy linens, and their
bronze statuary. Lights went up, and old clock
faces of brass, cut out and hidden from the brass-
hungry Germans, went back into the clocks, and
there was band music and a glory of colored
rockets in the Place at night, and parading and
shouting through the streets.
CHAPTER XI
fiO THIS IS GERMANY
On December 4, after a two-day trip from
Mersch, Luxembourg, Headquarters of &e
Rainbow Division reached Welschbillig, a muddy
little German village of about four hundred peo-
ple. The Red Cross man who got up there first
so urged his *'Tin Henry" that it navigated open
fields, ditches and steep embankments, passing
several miles of field artillery, infantry, machine-
gun battalions, engineer, ammunition and supply
trains, staff limousines, and other miscellaneous
vehicular and foot traffic, which was either stuck
in the mud, pulling up to let something pass in
the opposite direction or halting from sheer
fatigue.
The "Tin Henry," running on a thimbleful
of gas, rattling in every rib, asthmatic, rheimaatic,
full of grip and pneumonia, caught up to the
180
So This is Germany 181
tail of the column in Echternach, passed through
the completely hlocked streets by climbing on
the sidewalks, crossed the bridge over the Moselle
behind a mule-drawn machine-gun cart from the
Wisconsin battalion, and brought bitterness into
the hearts of foot soldiers and limousine staff
officers alike by disappearing over hill after hill
and around curve after curve, so that it was in
this one-night stand by four p. m., or in time to
get a billet in the home of one of the best fam-
ilies of WelschbiUig. A cream separator buzzed
away downstairs, and somebody was working
overtime down in the barn, running an electri-
cally operated threshing machine.
Jingoism had gained wide influence through-
out the Rainbow iDivision during its ten-day halt
on the borderland between Luxembourg and
Germany. There were great expectations of
sniping by the German population. Since it was
virtually useless to hope for Christmas at home,
the Rainbow Division hoped for a guerrilla war-
fare in Germany. The more imaginative among
Ihem conjured up pictures of themselves sneak-
ing from doorway to doorway in Berlin, exchang-
182 The Story of the Rainbow Division
ing shots with members of the Reichstag con-
cealed in second-floor bedrooms, or of a greeting
from across the border with a fusillade from the
farmers' shotguns.
But the only fusillade that greeted them came
from the oflScial United States Army moving
pictiu-e cameras set up on the German side of the
Echtemach Bridge. And from there all the way
up to Welschbillig soldiers who hoped for any
more excitement than that arising from trying
to move three-ton trucks up slippery hills were
disappointed.
But in the disappointment there was as much
to talk about and to argue about around the field
kitchen and billets as there would have been if a
sniper had opened up from each tree along the
road. The Welschbilligians, instead of being
guerrilla fighters, were trying to be regular folks.
Instead of potting the men of the Rainbow Divi-
sion with shotguns, they bombed them with cups
of hot barley coffee, gobs of honey, and armfuls
of firewood.
It was the first experience of the men of the
42nd Division as occupants of the homes of the
So This is Germany 188
nation it had been fighting every day for a whole
year. They were not quite sure what to do.
There were General Headquarters orders against
**fraternizing" with German villagers. "OflS-
eially" the country was hostile. The business of
the American Army here was to stick to the heels
of the retreating German Army. Theoretically,
it was a pursuit. For every purpose, except the
purpose of killing, the war was still on and the
armies were still in the field.
But you couldn't fight old women who came
hobbling into your oflSces at the head of parades
of a dozen kids, all loaded down with firewood.
[And you couldn't turn an unfraternal back on
old men who came in bringing chairs for the
office force to sit on. It put the Rainbow Divi-
sion in something of a dilemma.
There was a decided dilemma that evenmg
around the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff
in charge of Transportation and Supply. Lieut.
Marcus L. Poteet was running the office, while
Major Gill's temporary successor. Major Ber-
tram, was attending to some work in his Intelli-
gence Department.
184 The Story of the Rainbow DivUion
Every two or three minutes there came shuf-
fling into this office an old woman — bent almost
double — chuckling toothlessly, and wringing her
hands, and mumbling in German. She went al-
ways first to the stove and looked into the grate
— an easy operation for her, for she had never to
stoop over; stooping was her constant attitude.
Then, with plentiful gestures of her stiff old
hands, she'd poke a fresh stick of wood into the
fire. Then she'd turn around and make a brief
address, rapidly bobbing her head, which was
wrapped in a black shawl.
Lieutenant Poteet and Private Cooney and
Sergeant-Ma j or Walter Davis were a little leery
during her first two or three visits. When she
ambled out after feeding the stove the first time
they braced themselves for a few seconds and
held their breaths in case the stick of wood might
have been a disguised bomb. But nothing hap-
pened either that time or the next, or the next,
so when she turned around from the stove after
the fourth time, and made her little speech. Lieu-
tenant Poteet unbent and responded with a
hearty ".Yah, yah, yahl"
So This is Germany 185
In two minutes she was back with a pot of
coflFee which she planted on the stove. Her
daughter followed, bearing a deep bowl full of
fried potatoes. Her son, a discharged German
soldier with little piggy eyes and a friendly smile
under his Kaiser mustache, brought up the rear
with both fists full of knives and forks and a red
tablecloth under his arm.
"For Pete's sake, they're fratemizin'," said
Sergeant-Ma j or Davis, "What're y' goin' to
do?"
"I'm goin' to eat," said Private Cooney. So
everybody sat up to the table, while the thin,
rather cross-eyed daughter went back to the
kitchen to bring up the plates and cups.
The coffee was poor stuff, being made out of
charred barley, so they put into each cup a spoon-
ful of the self-made coffee which the Army car-
ries aroimd. But the potatoes were fine, and
when they had cleaned out the bowl, the old lady
came stooping in with another bowlful, and the
daughter brought in a dish of honey, and the
ex-soldier got on his knees and poked around the
fire, and six muddy, greasy children came in with
186 The Story of the Rainbow Division
more wood, did squads-left-into-line, dumped it
on the floor, squawked '^Achtv/ng/^ and goose-
stepped out in single file. It was a full half-
hour before the adults of the family stopped
standing around, grinning and muttering and
watching them eat.
When they finally cleaned up the dishes, rolled
up the tablecloth and left, Lieutenant Poteet
took a deep pull on a fresh cigar and annoimced :
"The next man that says 'Yah' to that old woman
gets court-martialed. One more 'Yah' and she'll
be in here giving everybody a shave, a haircut
and a bath, and that'll be fraternizing."
In muddy streets and plaster walls and smells
and general dreariness on a wet, misty day, this
village in Germany was not unlike villages of
the same population in France. The Rainbow
was going through the Rhine provinces, which,
judging from one day's journey, consisted of vast
expanses of forest, field and mountain, with
widely scattered villages.
The open country of France rolled gently and
the broad, smooth roads opened long vistas, and
you shot along on a straightaway for miles and
So This is Germany 187.
miles. But from Echternach to Welschbillig
there had been a succession of hill climbings and
coastings, with hairpin curves every few hundred
feet. Towering mountains rose before you^ and
a view of a winding road was lost in forest a
short distance ahead. But with a series of twists
and turns and a constant pull up grade after
grade^ you found yourself on the very top of the
forest and the ribbon of road you had just left
below looked like a cowpath. More mountains
on all sides hemmed in your range of vision.
There was a majestic grandeur about it all with
dts vast, deep silence, and it would have been more
thrilling if one hadn't had to contemplate it all
with real doubt that one was going to make the
next hill, and the next, and others beyond.
Thousands upon thousands of American
doughboys — ^walking with their packs on their
backs, piloting three-ton trucks almost as wide
as the roads themselves, driving raw-boned mules
and horses already tired to death with life and
the hauling of heaving wagons and cannon — all
had to make those hills to reach the Rhine.
Most of the men of the 42nd had finished the
188 . The Story of the Rainbow Divmon
first stage of the march and were settled that
night in the kitchens and attics here around
around Welschbillig. They knew the rule
against "fraternizing," but all the rules in the
world couldn't keep an American soldier from
making himself at home, even though a picture
of a man his own regiment killed in the Cham-
pagne a few weeks ago himg over his head as he
tilts his chair against the dining-room wall.
That thing happened in Welschbillig. The
dead German soldier's mother was pottering
aroimd the fire, where the Yank's mud-soaked
shoes were drying, and the little sisters and
brothers — nearly a dozen, all told — ^were lurking
at more or less of a distance, looking at his socks
and his clothes and his face, and urging each
other to go up and feel of his belt and pistol that
hung over a chair.
If fraternizing consisted of taking what came
your way and making the best of it, then the
Rainbow Division in Germany was composed of
the greatest thirty-third degree fraternizers in
the world.
They fraternized that night, too, down where
So This 18 Germany 18fl!
the officers of the Missouri Signal Battalion were
quartered — ^in the village sehoolhouse, where the
schoolmaster lived — ^but it was fraternizing of a
different sort. The schoolmaster spoke a little
English, and Col. Ruby Garret and the other
Signal officers wanted to know how the people of
Grcrmany felt about tljie war, now that it was all
over. The schoolmaster was convinced that the
Kaiser was all right; he had had a bunch of un-
fortunate rough-necks for friends, that was all.
If he had had his way the war never would have
started. But all Germany was glad it was over,
he said.
Unlike the farm villages of France, Welsch-
billig's muddy street comers had electric lights,
and there were electric lights in some of the rough
plaster houses, and instead of great open chim-
neys there were shiny enameled stoves. And
there were modem mechanical things like the
cream separator, and the threshing machine —
entirely unknown in rural France, apparently —
which were still buzzing merrily away, though it
was ten o'clock. Bits of the old "Kultur,'* un-
doubtedly.
CHAPTEKXn
»
'"die wacht am shein
Up at seven o'clock, on the road through a
tiiick fog, and into Speicher by noon, twenty-five
kilometers from Welschbillig. The third day of
the Rainbow Division's march to the Bhine across
Grerman soil was almost over and to-morrow it
[would move on to Birresbom.
The long brown columns were filtering deeper
into Germany. As the Belgians did when the
Germans came through in August, 1914, the
German villagers went to bed now with the rum-
ble of the American column in their ears and
awoke in the morning still hearing it, and moved
about through the day still seeing it, and dropped
off again to sleep without seeing or hearing the
end.
They knew now what had really happened on
Jjie fighting front while the General Staff of the
190
''Die Wacht lAm Rhdnf* 191
Oerman Army had fed them on faiiy tales of
yictory and requisitioned their poultry and butter
for Berlin.
This Tillage, where they stayed overnight like
an inunense troupe of barnstormers, was bigger
than Welschbillig. It had a fair little hotel with
one bathtub that was full of spare bed clothing
when they arrived. The bed clothing had since
been stored elsewhere, for Col. Ruby Garrett
managed to close a deal for a bath in the tub.
The beautifully enameled hot-water attachment
on the tub was out of order so they heated the
water on the kitchen stove downstairs, and a
broad-backed German girl brought it up in five
trips, carrying two buckets each trip— five
buckets of hot water and five buckets of cold.
She also cleaned out the tub and pulled down the
shades in the window and switched on the light
and brought in a rug for the floor and showed
signs of wanting to assist at the scrubbing fes-
tivities. So far there seemed to be nothing the
Grermans would not do to make the American
Army of Occupation feel at home.
The wife of the proprietor of the hotel (he.
192 The Story of the Rainbow Divmon
by the way, fought against the British at Cam-
brai and was gassed) even smoked a cigarette.
She was clearing off the table after a lunch for
six oflScers, and a sportive major thrust his
cigarette case toward her and nodded brightly.
With her free hand she very gingerly took one
and started to stick it in the pocket of her apron.
"No, no!" insisted the major, and struck a match.
So she put the cigarette between her lips and
.went out toward the kitchen puffing it, with her
arms full of dishes.
A minute or so later the ex-Boche soldier
walked past the kitchen door on some errand and
he was smoking his wife's cigarette.
They probably got the idea that it was the
custom for American women to smoke and that
they must do it, too, or the American soldiers
would lose their tempers and shoot up the town.
When a red-cheeked waitress came in to brush
away the crumbs and the major tried the same
stunt on her and she stood there flustered and
uncertain, Mrs. Proprietor spoke quickly and
quietly to her and she took the cigarette. After
''Die Wacht Idm Rheinf* 19a
one puff she fled from the dining-room, cough-
ing and gasping, and she didn't come hack.
An old man whose son and daughter-in-law
run a little souvenir and postcard shop here used
to live in Baltimore, he said. He had worked in
a steamfitter's shop and his most vivid recollec-
tion of the city, after having heen hack in Ger-
many for twenty-six years, was of the smells that
came up from the waterfront. One of the Bal-
timoreans he remembered best was Friederich,
who, he declared, buUt the City Hall.
"An' dere was Schultz — ^he voss a Choimanl'*
he'd say, trying to remember old names. "An*
Deiterich — ^he voss a Choiman. An' Gus
Schaefer — ^he voss a Choiman. Dey voss all
Choimans."
One gathered that the Baltimore of twenty-six
years ago was probably a suburb of Berlin, but
the old man said he had known a lot of other men
there who weren't Germans, but he couldn't re-
member their names. He tried to sell the offi-
cers some pipes with deep porcelain bowls deco-
rated with landscapes, with curved stems three
feet long and decorated with tassels and things,
194 The Story of the Rainbow DivUion
[which they would have bought if they had had
trucks or something to cany them.
He also whispered with a great show of se-
crecy that nobody in (Germany liked the Kaiser
— ^that he had always been a "voitless bum'*
[(those were his exact words — "a voitless bum"),
and that the "people in Berlin" were responsible
for everything the Germans had done during the
"Dese poor peoples oudt here didn't have nud-
ding to do wid it," he said. "Dey shouldn't pay;
der bills, should dey?"
They told him it looked very much as though
the "poor peeples oudt here" would have to chip
in a little because everybody else seemed to be
trying to crawl from under, like himself. He
looked very much hurt.
That evening down at the Gasthaus Geisler,
a bunch of our doughboys permitted themselves
to be hypnotized by a curly-haired German boy
of nineteen, who was performing miracles on the
piano in the room adjoining the bar. One of the
Louisiana Headquarters Troop men had been
reeling off some ragtime with a rather painful
''Die Wacht Am Rheinf' 195
two-fingered bass that was always consistent but
not always harmonious, when the boy came in
and stood peering at the crowd through a pair of
thick spectacles. In the moment or two of si-
lence that followed his entry, he said in perfect
English: * 'Would you like me to play a lit-
tle?"
"Sure, go ahead!" the soldiers chorused, and
the Headquarters Troop man got up from the
piano.
The German boy sat down, rubbed his stiflF
curls, adjusted his spectacles, struck a few ring-
ing chords and laimched into **The Star Span-
gled Banner."
He played for more than an hour without look-
ing at a note of music. "This is by Schumann/*
he'd announce, and then, "Here's a Beethoven
sonata," then "This is an American song, isn't
it?" and he'd play something from light opera.
Some of the other things he played were also
from light operas that were first produced in
America but the German boy did not recognize
them all as bits of American music. It was evi-
dent that they had been picked up bodily from
196 The Story of the Rainbow Divimm
Germany or Austria and imported to AmericaiL
orchestra pits.
Just before the end, Mike, the Italian attache
of the Casual OflScers' mess; Steve, the waiter i
the top-sergeant of the Headquarters Troop, two
military policemen with sidearms on and a
sprinkling of miscellaneous soldiery from the
United States of America were frozen in vari-
ous attitudes around the back room of this lit-
tle German cafe, leaning on the table, half-lying^
in chairs, himched on the floor in corners, while
the oil lamp swinging from the ceiling burned
up unnoticed with a black smoke and the curly-
haired German musical prodigy played "The
Barcarolle." Rippling brooks in New England —
the old canoe floating up the Potomac toward a
red Sunday sunset — ^moonlight on the upper
deck!
With a swift change of mood the boy struck
up "Die Wacht Am Rhein," and the shaven-
headed old lad who had been tending bar came
waltzing in, waving his long pipe and roaring the
song. The doughboys looked at him and grinned
''Die Wacht Am Rheinf' 197
a pitying sort of grin, but Mike, the ItaHan at-
tache, glowered.
"Steve," he whispered to the waiter for the
Casual Officers* mess, "Steve, you crown him for
me, will you? I ain't got the heart/*
CHAPTER Xin
"the conquerino of the hiohsoad'*
Next morning, on its way to Birresbom, the
Rainbow Division began a heart-breaking battie
with the roads of Germany. Like the Grerman
Grovernment and the German Army, they had
broken — ^gone to pieces. Collapsing under the
steady rain and the hacking hoofs and wheels of
the invading American colrnnn, they were trying
to halt the Rainbow in its march upon the Rhine.
It is as though they believed the last struggle was
up to them.
Our soldiers had been smelling it in the dis-
tance, this battle. In the mountain climbs, the
hairpin curves, the slippery slopes that began on
the German side of the border there were prophe-
cies of it. But they didn't expect it to be as
tough as it proved to be.
Staff officers were climbing out of the leather
198
''The Conquering of the Highroaff^ 199
cushions into the mud this particular morning,
to push. The main road between Speicher and
Birresbom that stacked up on the maps with the
main roads of France, were mudholes. They
looked like the "before"* photographs in adver-
tisements of paving material. The edges were
miles of sticky strawberry jam^ with no limit to
its depth. The two deep ruts down the middle
made by the wagons of the retreating German
Army were snares and delusions. Worried
truck drivers and harassed staff chauffeurs
picked these ruts instinctively, as a locomotive
picks the rails; within two hundred yards their
only conceivable salvation had tripped them.
The ruts were too deep ; sometimes the wheels of
lighter cars were clear of the bottoms ; the heav-
ier cars were mortised-and-tenoned in the road-
bed.
And the roads squirmed and curved and
climbed, and at least one edge of most of them
was also the edge of a precipitous descent through
wild forests and rocks.
Under the best conditions it was not the easi-
est thing in the world to pick up an American
200 The Story of the Rciribow Division
Army Division and move it, holding it together
during the moving and keeping it fit for the ex-
ercise of its profession at every moment. Still
less easy was it to move an American Army di-
vision every morning and set it down to rest every
night, repeating that process day after day and
night after night and covering twenty-five kilo-
meters or so every day.
The strength of the Rainhow Division march-
ing into Germany was, roughly, twenty-three
thousand men, about the population of the city of
Cumberland, Md. Nearly four thousand gal-
lons of gasoline were required to keep its motor
transportation moving for one day. Its truck-
carrying capacity was close to one thousand tons.
It had between two hundred and seventy-five and
three hundred giant trucks. Its smaller auto-
mobiles numbered about forty.
The dope seemed to be that the Rainbow
would reach the Rhine by December 17. The
division had started into Germany on December
2. Looking ahead, the Rainbow's Quartermas-
ter, Lieutenant-Colonel George F. Graham, of
Texas, must have figured that he would have to
''The Conquering of the Highroad^* 201
use sixty thousand gallons of gasoline on the trip
at the lowest estimate. To carry sixty thousand
gallons of gasoline for fifteen days would be as
impracticable and unwise as to carry food suf-
ficient for that length of time and in such enor-
mous quantities. Simple principles of conserva-
tion dictated adherence to a "base-of-supplies"
system.
So that when the 42nd Division pulled up for
the night and announced to the German villag-
ers, "We'll stop here ; come across with the keys
to the city," it did not mean that the day's travel
was over. Several hundred tons of trucks had
still to go back to the railroads and bring up the
food and gasoline for another day — ^the food and
gasoline and equipment to replace the wear and
tear of the day's grind.
Imagine moving Cumberland, Md., like that
every day, or Chillicothe, Ohio, or Stamford,
jConn., or Pensacola, Fla.
The Rainbow Division, veterans of the whole
[American Expeditionary Force in point of
length of continuous service in the fighting line,
was accustomed enough to moving. It had done
202 The Story of the BatTiboto Divmoti ]
more moving from one part of the line to another
than any other American division, with a fight at
both ends of the move more often than not. Mov-
ing was nothing — ^mere detail in the day's work.
And so far as moving through Grermany was con-
cerned, why, that would be a vacation. No
shellholes to get the traffic across, no ripped-up
roads, no night marching, no fighting. Great!
Certainly would like to be going home, the
42nd Division would, but this was the next best
thing — seeing Germany, soldiering de luxe.
Why, this was a pretty fair reward for a year of
the most terrible work human men can be called
upon to do. To be sure, some birds were being
sent back home, but they were replacement divi-
sions mostly. Never had seen a fight, some of
them hadn't. Let 'em go I This Germany trip
was the thing I
That was the spirit back in Brandeville,
France, when the 42nd was waiting for its
new equipment to come up — ^its new trucks,
more trucks than it had ever had before, and its
new clothes and its new passenger automobiles.
That was also the spirit through Belgium and
^'The Conquering of the Highroa^^ 208
Luxembourg, where the days dawned clear and
warm, and where the work of ''occupation'^ was
about as arduous as strolling through the old
cherry orchard.
Yet, on this move to Birresbom an officer said,
"When they pick an Army of Occupation after
the next war, count me out V*
And a supply officer said, "I'd rather supply
three regiments in the front line of an attack
than try to keep stuff moving up behind one regi-
ment along roads like these."
And there was expressed in various ways the
sentiment that fighting a war is preferable to oc-
cupying the conquered enemy's country, when
the country is the inhuman sort of coimtry that
this German country is. Forever, in the minds
of the Rainbow Division men (I can't speak for
men in other parts of the Army of Occupation)',
Germany will stand as the symbol of the utmost
in rotten roads, just as France will stand as the
symbol of the best. And this discovery of how
demoralized roads can become, is apt to bring
about a revolution in our American road plans,
204 The Story of the Rainboro Divmon
when these victims of Grermany's broken-backed
roads get settled at home.
A detachment of two hundred men worked
from truck to truck that day along the roads be-
tween Kyllburg and St. Thomas, pulling them
out of the mire and the ditches. It took the ccwn-
bined strength of every one of these two hundred
men to move these trucks, for they were loaded
with tons of supplies. Sometimes the releasing
of one truck opened the way for a whole train
of others that were not heavily loaded. Some-
times the crew of two hundred truck-pullers had
to tow each truck several hundred yards to the
beginning of a stretch of firm road, then go back
for the others, one at a time. Elsewhere on the
roads, no gang of men being available, two or
three trucks that had managed to keep out of
trouble would be pushing and pulling a loaded
truck that had gotten into trouble. One would
be pushing and two pulling; the engines would
roar, the wheels would spin, and the motor-mon-
sters would leap and tug, panting and growling
like great trapped animals ; and finally, clamping
^^The Conquering of the Highroad^' 205^
their teeth on something solid at last^ $lowly^
painfully drag their loins up — ^up — and out.
"All right — diet's go!" and the men who "fight
the trucks" would be off down the road, slipping
and sliding drunkenly, fighting forward every
inch of the way, maybe for two himdred yards
without a halt.
In the selection of divisions to form the Army
of Occupation the element of reward for extraor-
dinary services in the war did figure, and the
men knew it. That is why they were so cheer-
ful as they toiled up the red-muck hills, snaking
trucks out of ditches, urging tired horses to an-
other long pull, walking with feet that weighed
many times more than ordinary feet, for the i^oes
of the infantry gathered the German mud and
grew in size and tonnage like the snowball roll-
ing down the hill. And that, in fact, is why
they groused about it when they settled down
for an evening or two in a new German village
a little nearer the river Rhine; for no soldier's
vacation was complete unless he could sit around
of an evening with some of his buddies and swap
growls and kicks.
206 The Story of the BaMbom Divimari
They had wide-eyed, oi>en-moutfaed galleries
now in the kitchens of Grermany. Birresbom, a
town about as big as Speicher, was a two-night
stand, and every man who could possibly do it
had hunted himself up a billet in some German
house. By four o'clock the first afternoon the
casual officers' mess was established in the vil-
lage Gasthaus, a phonograph was going and a
group of officers had discovered that there was
exactly one-half of a keg of beer left in the vil-
lage, and had chipped in and bought it — ^**just
so we'd have some on hand," one of them said.
By five o'clock they were sitting around a table
beginning the evening's grouse, with two amazed
German women watching them from behind the
bar, and a sepia-toned picture of Wilhelm II
looking down at them from the wall. That night
at supper the captain-photographer in the
Signal Battalion surveyed the officers of the
42nd Division, seated up and down two long
tables shoveling in food and dealing out conver-
sation, while the Kaiser, as he looked in the
grand old days before the ground rose up and
hit him, haughtily contemplated the scene; and
''The Conquering of the Highroad^' 207,
he opinedy this captain photographer did, that
this certainly would make a fine flashlight for
the Rainbow Division's pictorial record.
But he never took it. He told me instead boW
every negative of the division's march through
France and Belgimn had been ruined in Luxem-
burg when a bunch of little Luxemburg children,
wondering whether the nice leather case wasn't
full of that precious thing, chocolate, had opened
it, pulled out the plates and exposed every one
to the light.
But coming into Germany he had gotten some
good stuff. Spinning along in his Ford truck
he sat on the front seat and the sergeant hung
his legs over the tailgate, and between them both
they licked the German scenery-plattc]^ clean.
That morning they caught a group of Germans
working on two dead horses. They had just
skinned the horses and the photographer had
"shot" the whole scene — one German rolling up
the skins and putting them in a wheelbarrow;
two others cutting steaks and piling them into
another wheelbarrow, and the rest looking on
hungrily.
208 The Story of the BainbotD Division
Leather would come from the skins probably
and the steaks would trot theu* last heat from the
frying pan to several German dining-room
tables.
Knowing how hard up Germany is for leather
everybody was surprised to hear in Bhresbom
the story about Major Bertram's boots. Major
Bertram was intelligence officer of the 42nd9
but as the work of an intelligence officer in
an Army of Occupation consists principally
of repeating every day "There are no new iden-
tifications in the army," and "There are no new
enemy movements to report," Major Bertram
had been handling Major Bob Gill's job while
the latter was in the hospital. Major Gill's job
was the job of moving the division — some job.
At noon Major Bertram had started for Bir-
resbom. Just before he left Speicher the Major
remarked : "Let's run back to Welschbillig first.
My orderly left my best Cordovan boots back
there. I've been saving them for the big entry
into Coblenz."
•His companions in the big limousine remarked
that it was too bad the orderly had forgotten
'^The Conquering of the Highroad^' 209
about them^ and they certainly hoped he'd find
them, but secretly they didn't think he would,
and he probably didn't think so either. A
leather-hungry German had probably pounced
upon them, and, by some miraculous application
of Kultiu*, had turned them into two hundred
pairs of shoes worth two hundred and fifty marks
a pair.
Also there was fresh in Lieutenant Poteet's
mind the strange little story he^ad heard that
morning from his orderly. It didn't tend to
make him feel hopeful for the major's boots. I
will tell that story presently.
As for Major Bertram he went straight to his
Welschbillig billet, was in the house about three
minutes, and came out grinning all over and tri-
umphantly carrying the boots.
"The old fellow had locked them in his safe
so that nobody would steal them," he laughed.
Pretty lucky, eh?"
Well, there's one honest German," said Lieu-
tenant Poteet.
Looking at it from that angle, Germany so
far as one could figure it, had a batting average
210 The Story of the Rainbow Division
in the Honesty League of about .001. If the
following strange story had had a different end-
ing it might have been .002. And this is the
story of Lieutenant Poteet's orderly.
The orderly had fixed up the lieutenant's cot
in the lieutenant's room and had fixed his own
blankets on it, preparatory to sleeping there,
while the lieutenant slept in the bed. Then the
orderly went down to the WelsehbiUig school-
house to sit around the stove for a while with a
bunch of other Kansas men.
.When he came back. Lieutenant Poteet was
in bed, but not asleep.
"You should have been here/' he told the boy.
"The old man who owns this place was up here
f raternizin'. He came up about an hour ago and
went fumbling around in that wardrobe. He
came out with his hands full of cakes shaped like
birds and animals and gave me one,
"From what I could understand tomorrow is
St. Nicholas Day here in Germany — ^December
6 — and the Weinachtsman is supposed to leave
these little cakes for the children. It's like our
Christmas. He gave me this cake shaped like a
^^The Conquering of the HighroojX* 211
rabbit as a St. Nicholas present. I wanted to
keep it as a souvenir, but the old man insisted on
my eating it right away. It was pretty good."
The orderly was properly sorry he hadn't been
around when this little bit of Christmas cheer was
passing. There would be little enough Christ-
mas over here anyway. The Germans had al-
ways specialized in St. Nicholas, too. They
were the originators of Santa Claus — started him
out as a round, fat, white-whiskered, apple-
cheeked, delightful old man who was always
laughing and giving away presents around the
snow-and-holly time. He was wishing he had
had one of these cakes — springling, Poteet had
said the old German called them — ^when he went
to sleep.
In the morning he sat on the edge of his cot to
dress and reached for his socks, which he had laid
on the table that stood against the wall. Night
before the light of the single candle had been
dim and flickering and he hadn't noticed the table
much. He noticed it now, though. It was full
of little plaster images of saints and there was
812 The Story of the Rairib&ej Divmofi
a vase of artificial roses on it and a vase of some
dried grasses and a picture of a little girl.
By the picture lay something that made the or-
derly start and rub his eyes. It was a "spring-
ling" — a St. Nicholas Day cake — a Christmas
present. The old man had put it there for him I
Well, that was pretty white for an old Boche.
The cake was shaped on the rough, general
lines of a rooster. The orderly bit a piece out
of it. It was pretty good. He decided to keep
the rest and take it home. That would be a
great souvenir to take home — a real German St.
Nicholas cake, left by old Santa Claus himself
in his own country, which had just been licked
by the Rainbow Division, et al. So he put it
in his pocket, dressed hurriedly, dashed down-
stairs to breakfast in the old German's kitchen,
where he and some other orderlies had arranged
for mess in Welschbillig, and went about the
work of getting himself and his lieutenant ready
to move on to Speicher.
It was about nine o'clock in the morning and
he was halfway there, riding on a baggage truck,
when a startling thought occurred to him. He
^'The Conquering of the Highroad^* 218
had felt the cake in his pocket and his mind had
gone back over the train of events that led to its
being there. He recalled the little table, and
everything about it stood out sharply in his mem-
ory. In memory it had a strange look that he
hadn't noticed in the hurry of the morning.
There was something sacred about it. Those
plaster images — one of them was of the Savioiu*,
he remembered now, and there had been a cruci-
ifixy too, and they had all been arranged in some
order.
And that picture; the cake had been lying
right in front of it. It was a picture of a little
girl dressed all in white, with a wreath around her
hair. Her first communion dress, probably.
She must have been the old man's little girl.
Just there, apparently, this startling thought
hit him between the eyes. Why, that table was
a family altar, of course I That cake hadn't been
put there for him, the old man hadn't even known
he was going to stay in the room. He had put
the cake there for his little girl. The little girl
had died. They probably put the same cake
there every year on St. Nicholas' Eve.
214 The Story of the Btdiibom Dtoimon
Now, this Kansas boy was like every otlie:
soldier in the American Army of Occupation
He had been in the hardest fights in the war
He hadn't been an orderly very long, he had been
a fighting, hard-boiled, rough-neck doughboy ^c
knew the German as an enemy, for he had seen
the German trying to kill him and actually kill-
ing some of his buddies. Like every other
American soldier, he had appit)ached the Ger-
man border with some hauteur and contempt,
ready at the flicker of an eyelash to shig to his
knees the first German who tried to get gay.
And, like every other American, he had been
patting the dirty little German kids' heads and
smiling at the old women, and not being too
coldly distant toward the village girls, and being
more paternal than contemptuous toward the
men, ever since he had gotten into Germany.
So he didn't let this new St. Nicholas Day de-
velopment worry him long, but hopped off the
truck, caught one going back to Welschbillig,
sneaked into the old house and up the stairs, and
with his overseas cap in his hand, placed the
"springling" back on the table in front of the
^'The Conquering of the Highroad!* 215
ipicture of the little girl who was undoubtedly
dead — ^the "springling" with the piece he had bit-
ten out of it. Then he went out to catch another
truck for Speicher, feeling deeply at peace with
everything and everybody. The poor old man's
Christmas offering to his little daughter would
not go astray now. These Germans might be
enemies, but the war was over now, and the Ger-
mans would listen to American doctrine more
earnestly if they had a high opinion of the hon-
esty of American soldiers. Well, he'd done his
part.
He happened to catch the truck on which the
boy who had cooked for their mess down in the
€^nnan kitchen, was going to Speicher. It was
a nice little mess — a congenial bunch of enlisted
men with one of them acting as cook and draw-
ing all the rations, and with nobody butting in.
"What d'ye think?" said the cook, taking one
of the orderly's cigarettes. "Y'know that old
rat-eyed bird back there where we ate? Well
yimow we had three whole cans of bacon last
night. This old bird stole the other two. Sure
as you're bom! Got in the truck after they
216 The Story of the Bairiboto Division
loaded everything in, and when I looked aroui
just a few minutes ago, there was only one lef
An' the ole woman was cookin' bacon on the sto^
this mornin', too. For two cents, I'd go ba<
there and crown him with a .45 but what's tl
use. You couldn't prove it on him, but he sto
it, all right."
The Kansas boy was silent for a long whil
and it wasn't until the cook had forgotten b
about it that he said,
- "Why didn't you tell me that sooner, cooki*
I'd like to go back an' crown him myself."
" 'S too late now," said the cook.
"yes," said the Kansas boy, " 's too late."
CHAPTER XIV
THE BOCHE UNMASKED
Aeound the kitchen stoves of the formerly
Imperial Germany the greatest of indoor sports
for the Rainbow Division these days was "cuss-
ing'* the Kaiser.
"Well, what d'ye think o' the Kaiser now?"
the doughboys would drawl, by way of starting
the conversation, as they hitched up the kitchen
chairs of an evening and offered the cigarettes
to Mein Herr and Meine Frau and all the little
"Hairs" and "frows" who were numerous even
as the sands of the sea, and that is no joke. One
could think long and deeply for some way to tell
briefly what a great niunber of little children
there were in Germany, but it would be all a
waste of time, because just as soon as one decided
upon a nice, high-sounding set of words, along
would come new, incredible droves of children,
217
218 The Story of the Rainbow DixHsion
and the nice words would not be fit to describe
the size of the seventh grade's attendance on the
morning of circus day.
Mein Herr, listening keenly to the doughboy,
because he wanted to be friendly, would catch
the word "Kaiser." The rest of the sentence
wouldn't mean anything to him at all, but that
word "Kaiser'' would be enough of a cue. There
was the place for the entering wedge.
There was the chance to drive home the big
idea — the biggest idea that that part of Germany
seemed to have just then.
"Achl" snarled Mein Herr. "Ach! Kaiser
Kaput 1 Finish Kaiser! Kaput 1"
"Well, well!" said the doughboy, somewhat
surprised and somewhat pleased, too, for this at-
titude of the owner of his billet upon the sub j ect
of the Kaiser, sort of put a common imderstand-
ing between him and the old man. "Why,
maybe he'll come across with some eggs for lunch
or dinner tonight, and maybe the old woman will
trot out some honey 1"
So they proceeded with words — stilted mono-
syllabic words of mingled English and Grerman,
The Boche Unmasked 219
with now and then, on the part of the doughhoy,
a little of the hard- won French that was too good
to go entirely to waste — to vie with each other
at drawing and quartering the Kaiser.
The hatred of the American soldier for the
things the Kaiser represents — or represented —
needs no introduction, but this hatred on the part
of the German people in the country through
which the American army was passing probably
does need an introduction. It was then so new
that the German people had not had time yet to
take down the pictures of the Kaiser and Hin-
denburg and Ludendorff and Bismarck and the
Crown Prince, which hung over their heads on
the kitchen and dining-room walls even as they
hailed curses and "kaputs." They still deco-
rated their walls with likenesses of the heroes they
professed to hate.
On this, the second day of Rainbow Division
Headquarters' stay in Birresborn, I discovered
in my room a pictm^e of the head of the house-
hold. Unless you looked at it very closely you
could not tell that the pictive represented the
man you had seen downstairs. It had been taken
i
220 The Story of the Rainbow Division
in Trier four years ago, when the old gentleman,
attired in his best, with a black bow tie and about
three inches of white cuff showing at his wrists,
looked like the president of the city council or
the superintendent of the Sunday School.
But Sunday morning, when he was getting
ready to go to church with his wife and daugh-
ters, he looked like an old down-and-outer. His
threadbare, wrinkled coat, of no particular shade,
was buttoned high around his throat to cover the
lack of white collar. There were fringes around
his wrists instead of cuffs, and his face was old
and seamed, and covered with a stubble of beard.
He was only four years older; he had not taken
to drink (in fact, as the village brewer, he had
begun producing mineral water instead of beer
when times grew hard), and he was still a re-
spected figure in the community. But he had
changed entirely in appearance, and he had
changed in ideals and disposition.
He hated everything. He hated the Kaiser
and drew his finger suggestively across his throat
whenever anybody mentioned the word ''Kaiser."
He hated the "Berlin crowd" ; he hated Hinden-
The Boche Unmasked 221
burg and Ludendorff and the Crown Prince.
He hated Von Tirpitz.
And he hated also the Socialists and citizens
who were handling the Grovernment of Germany
in the Kaiser's absence, and just to round out the
schedule, he professed a snippish attitude toward
the United States and President Wilson.
Gold, gold, gold, started the war, he would
growl, rubbing his thumbs and fingers together.
All the gang in Berlin wanted was more gold, so
they started the war — or rather Russia started it.
He leaned against the door- jamb, looking into
his dining-room, where six Division Headquar-
ters sergeants sat around the table smoking after
mess. The sergeant in charge of couriers who
was translating what the old man said, wanted
to know whether the United States had come into
the war for gold.
The Overman exploded a forcible "Yah I" and
uttered the names of "Rockefeller" and "Mor-
gan.'*
"He says," translated the courier-sergeant,
"that Morgan and Rockefeller got the United
222 The Story of the Rainbow DivUion
States into the war." The sergeants laughed
long and loud.
''Ask him if Morgan and Rockefeller sent tiie
submarines out to sink American ships and
drown American citizens/' asked Sergeant
"Slim" Wilson. The courier-sergeant asked
him. The face of the head of the house assumed
A tigerish grin as he answered.
"He says the submarines would have won the
war if they let Von Tirpitz alone," declared the
interpreter.
Apparently he hadn't fully understood the
question, but, unwittingly, he was making him-
self clear on everything. He was giving these
American soldiers a picture of the middle-class
citizenry of Germanv as it looked with the war
over and lost.
This representative middle-class German
hated the old German Government for starting
the war because it hadn't won the war. He
hated the United States because the United
States had defeated Germany. He hated Von
Tirpitz because he had started the submarine war
and hadn't finished it.
The Boche Unmasked 229
We wondered, from all this, why he hated the
new government which was repudiating aU the
things for which the old war-losing government
had stood.
"He says," the courier-sergeant translated,
"that the new government wants to take his chil-
dren out of school and put them to work, and he
says he ain't going to stand for it."
We had gathered that he was talking about
something that infuriated him for his expression
was ferocious and as he talked he struck an open
palm with a clenched fist.
The old government had sapped him of his
substance to make war. The new government
wanted to sacrifice the future of his children to
the present reconstruction needs of the nation.
He and his family were middle-class folk, and
the end of the war had caught them between an
upper and a nether millstone, because his only
concern under whatever government he lived,
had been for the selfish welfare of himself and
his family. If imperialism and victorious war-
fare could bring him and them more comforts,
well and good. But imperialism had failed him
224 The Story of the Rainbow Divmon
and now its substitutes were failing him, so damn
them — all of them, and everything that was mak-
ing him a cheap pawn.
The village brewer was working himself into
something of a rage imder the questioning of
the six sergeants and their patronizing smiles at
his answers, so they stopped suddenly. "He'll
begin throwing plates around in a minute," Ser-
geant-Ma j or Walter Davis said.
* He seemed to regret his outburst because later
in the evening he came upstairs and opened two
bottles of his own Birresborn mineral water and
sat down and told us that usually during that sea-
son the snow was about four feet deep, and that
the beer crop in Germany had been a failure for
the past two years.
It appeared now, though, that the general dis-
position of the German was changing every-
where, at least everywhere the Rainbow Divi-
sion was staying. At first he had sneaked
around and regarded Americans from the cor-
ners of his eyes. Then he had stood still and
looked at them frankly and openly, and respect-
The Bbche Unmasked 225
fully touched his hat when they glanced in his
direction.
Now that he was reassured — certain that the
American Army intended to do none of the things
he had been taught to believe Americans did to
those they conquered — he was showing that his
humility was a mask, and the ''old Boche" in him
was reappearing. The Germans had been given
the inch and they were trying to. get away with
the mile.
It seems that the German people were figuring
that the simple-hearted Americans didn't real-
ize that they were actually conquerors and en-
titled to run things to suit themselves. In obedi-
ence to regulations, the American troops (they
figured) would probably try to requisition wood
and forage and some other things they needed,
but had not word arrived from down the road
that the Americans weren't particular about
those things and that one needn't fear the con-
sequences of turning them down? Sure it had!
So in the village of Schlied twenty discharged
German soldiers got together on the day the
117th ammunition train from Kansas pulled in
226 The Story of the Rainbow Divmon
and decided to put something over. They sent
a spokesman to Major Frank, the C, O., to in-
form him that his soldiers could not requisition
wood and forage from the citizens of Sohlied.
The spokesman was very polite about it, and he
was very sorry, but the Americans had no right
to this forage and wood, and they, the citizens of
Schlied, Germany — ex-soldiers of the all-highest
— didn't propose to give it to them.
In a few well-chosen words — ^polite, but to the
point — ^Major Frank told the spokesman to get
to hell out of his office.
He ordered the Burgomaster of Schlied to ap-
pear before him instantly. The Burgomaster
appeared and Major Frank hitched his chair up
to a table, picked out a spot of its top that looked
as though it would stand heavy pounding and
launched into a rollicking old chantey with bass-
drum accompaniment.
"Your village has insulted the American
Army. It has sent a discharged soldier of the
German Army to tell me that it can't have things
or do things.
"First of all, neither you nor any other Ger-
The Boche Unmasked 22H
man in this whole acreage of limburger can tell
me what American troops can have or can't have,
^'Second, no civilians can come in here and talk
to me at all. And if I want to say anything to
this gang here I'll say it through you, and I'll
send for you when I want you.
"Third, no more conferences of prominent cit-
izens here. If I hear of more than ten people in
Schlied gathering together in one place, I'll send
armed guards to scatter 'em.
"And lastly: I don't expect to ask your peo-
ple to furnish my men any meat or bread, or any
food at all. The American Army is able to feed
itself. But if I do want meat or bread or eggs
or butter, you'll furnish it, do you understand?
And whenever I want hay, hay I'll have I When-
ever I want wood, wood I'll have! You'll get
it and bring it where I tell you to, and you'll get
a receipt for it, and that'll be the end of it imtil
I want some more ! Now, get out of here 1'*
And extravagant rumor-hounds do say that
somebody started a movement in Schlied to make
the Ammunition Train Major the first Presi-
dent of Grcrmany.
CHAPTER XV
CASTLES ON THE BHINE
On the banks of the Rhine the Rainbow Divi-
sion halted on the fifteenth of December. There,
at its goal, it stood as it had stood so many months
before on the "Valley Forge Hike" through the
snow from Vaucouleurs to Rolampont — ^with its
bare feet sticking out of its shoes.
For the Rainbow had walked all the way, from
the front line in France to the heart of Germany.
The food it needed had managed to follow it.
Its wagons and trucks, though the mud had
clutched desperately at the wheels, had managed
to keep up. But the shoes it wore when the
march ended were the same shoes it had worn
when the march began. French railroads had
not been able to handle food for the American
Army of Occupation and shoes as well.
So all the brave finery with which the Rainbow
228
Castles on the Rhine 229
had started out from Brandeville back in No-
vember was gone now. Redeemed France and
Belgium had seen some of it and had been prop-
erly impressed. But Germany, whose own sol-
diers were to have marched into Paris glittering
with new brass and silver and patent-leather, saw
in the newly arrived American Army of Occu-
pation (at least in the Rainbow part of it), a
band of men who were almost ragamuffins.
The ragamuffins brought up the tail end of the
divisional column. Commanded by officers who
had dropped out along the way to pick up the
men whose marching shoes had broken down un-
der them, they made a sort of auxiliary regiment.
And almost immediately they went from ricga-
muffinism to a state of baronial opulence. They
took up a new life in castles on the Rhine.
The infantry regiments and machine-gun out-
fits were in towns on the very bank of the river.
The artillerymen were in towns from ten to
twenty kilometers west of the river. Division
Headquarters was in Ahrweiler, about twenty
kilometers from the stream. Coblenz was about
thirty kilometers to the south; Cologne, where
282 The Story of the Rainbow Division
of the G^erman scenery and "grousing" about
everything in the world, with nothing but good-
natured ill-terfiper over everything in the uni-
verse except the vision of home.
For the vision of home was always a glorious
thing to the Rainbow Division — as glorious a
thing as the vision to the nation that sent them of
the Rainbow's career on the fields of France.
And though home becomes more than a vision
to the Rainbow, the Rainbow will never be more
than a vision to home. It paraded our streets
and the home-folk saw it marching, but they
never saw it fighting and never can. Of that
there is nothing left for the home-folk but poor,
halting stories — ^like those recounted here.
THE END
APPENDIX I
fiOSTER OF RAINBOW DIVISION OFFICERS AT
CAMP MILLS, IN OCTOBER, 1917
PERSONNEL OF RAINBOW DIVISION STAFF
Major General William A. Mann. . Division Conunander.
Captain John B. Coulter Aide-de-Camp.
Colonel Douglas MacArthur Chief of Staff.
Major Samuel R. Cleaves Asst. to C. of S.
Major William N. Hughes, Jr. Asst. to C. of S.
Major Francis W. Ralston Division Adjutant.
Major Marion S. Battle Asst. Div. Adjutant.
Lieut Col. John L. DeWitt Division Quartermaster.
Lieut. Col. George F. Baltzell Division Inspector.
Lieut CoL Blanton Winship Judge Advocate.
Lieut. Col. J. W. Grissinger Division Surgeon.
Major James W. Frew Asst. to Div. Surgeon.
Major David S. Fairchild Asst. to Div. Surgeon.
Major James K. Crain Division Ordnance Officer.
Lieut. Col. Hanson B. Black Division Signal Officer.
Colonel William C. Brown Cavalry, Attached.
Captain Oscar W. Underwood .... Cavalry, Attached.
Major George F. Graham Asst. to Div. Quartermaster.
Major Allen Potts Asst. to Div. Quartermaster.
Captain Marshall F. Sharp Asst. to Div. Quartermaster.
Captain George W. McLean Asst. to Div. Quartermaster.
2nd Lieut. James S. Harvey Asst. to Div. Quartermaster.
2nd Lieut. Fred. O. Klackering Asst. to Div. Quartermaster.
2nd Lieut. John P. Clark Asst. to Div. Quartermaster,
Captain Edw. DuBois Asst. to Div. Surgeon.
Captain Thomas A. Burchman .... Asst. to Div. Surgeon.
1st Lieut M. P. Lane Asst to Div. Surgeon.
233
284 The Story of the Rainboto Divmon
l8t Lieat. William F. Satchell .... Asst to DIt. Surgeon.
l8t Lieut. R. McK. McDowell ....Asst to Div. Surgeon.
1st Lieut. G. C. Van Sickle Asst. to Div. Surgeon.
1st Lieut. D. J. Downey Div. Statistical Section.
2nd Lieut. G. B. Norton Div. Statistical Section.
12nd Lieut. Don C. Sims Div. Statistical Sectioa.
1st Lieut. W. S. Murray Interpreter.
2nd Lieut. F. R. Wulsin Interpreter.
HEADQUARTERS TROOP
(1st Bsparate Troop, Louisiana Ca/vaJry)
Captain Louis J. Taylor Commanding Officer.
148th machine gun battalion
(Cos, I, K, L and M, 4^h Permsylvania Infantry)
Major Quintin O. Reitzell Commanding Officer.
BRIGADE AND REGIMENTAL OFFICERS OF 83rd IN-
FANTRY BRIGADE ON OCTOBER 12, 1917
Brigadier General Michael J. Lenihan. . Brigade Commander.
Major Wylie T. Conway Brigade Adjutant.
1st Lieut. Howard Grose
1st Lieut. Leon W. Miesse
(2nd Lieut. Roy H. Boberg
165th infantry
(69th New York Infantry)
Colonel Charles Hine Regimental Commander.
Lieut. Col. Latham R. Reed
Major Timothy J. Moynahan C. O. 1st Battalion.
Major William B. Stacom C. O. 2nd Battalion.
Major William J. Donovan C. O. 3rd Battalion.
1st Lieut. Francis P. Duffy Chaplain.
Major George J. Lawrence Regimental Surgeon.
Appendix I 285
166th INFANTftT
{4th Ohio Infantry)
Colonel Benson W. Hough Regimental Commander.
Lieut. Col. George Florence
Captain Charles C. Gusman Regimental Adjutant
Major Roll G. Allen C. O. 1st Battalion.
Major Frank D. Henderson C. O. 2nd Battalion.
Major Louis D. Houser C. O. 3rd Battalion.
1st Lieut. J. J. Halllday Chaplain.
Captain Fred K. Kislig Regimental Surgeon.
150th MACHnrE qvs battalion
{Co8, A, B, C, £nd Wisconsin Infantry)
Major William B. Hall Commanding Officer.
BRIGADE AND REGIMENTAL OFFICERS OF 84th IN-
FANTRY BRIGADE ON OCTOBER 19, 1917
Brigadier General Robert A. Brown ..Brigade Commander.
Major S. M. Rumbough Brigade Adjutant.
9nd Lieut. Geo. B. Mourning Aide-de-Camp.
ihid Lieut David W. Oyler Aide-de-Camp.
167th IKFAKIST
{4th Alabama Infantry)
Colonel William P. Screws Regimental Conmiander.
Lieut Col. Walter E. Bare
Major Hartley A. Moon C. O. 1st Battalion.
Major Dallas B. Smith C. O. ?nd Battalion.
Major John W. Carroll C. O. 3rd Battalion.
Captain Robert Joerg Regimental Adjutant
Major John W. Watts Regimental Surgeon.
286 The, Story of the Rainbow Divirion
168tK IKFAimT
{Srd Iowa Infantry)
Colonel Ernest R. Bennett Regimental Commander.
lieut Col. Matthew A. Tinley
Major Guy S. Brewer C. O. 1st Battalion.
Major Claude M. Stanley C. O. Snd Battalion.
Major Emery C. Worthington C. O. Srd Battalion.
Captain Paul I. VanOrder ..Regimental Adjutant.
Winfred E. Robb , Chaplain.
Major Wilbur S. Conkling Regimental Surgeon.
151bT MACHUTE gun BAITALIOir
{Co9. B, C and F, 2nd Georgia Infantryy
Major Cooper D. Winn Commanding Officer.
BRIGADE AND REGIMENTAL OFFICERS OF 67th FIELD
ARTILLERY BRIGADE ON OCTOBER 12, 1917
Brigadier Gen. Charles P. Summerall . . Brigade Commander.
Captain Max E. Payne Attached.
Captain H. R. Denton Attached.
Captain James F. Burns Attached.
1st Lieut. James A. Holt Attached.
1st Lieut. Stephen M. Foster Attached.
2nd Lieut. L. P. Jerrard Attached.
2nd Lieut. Rayman K. Aitken Attached.
2nd Lieut. A. B. Butler Attached.
2nd Lieut. De Lano Andrews Attached.
149tII FIELn ARTILLERY
{let Illinois Field Artillery)
Colonel Henry J. Reilly Regimental Commander.
Lieut. Colonel Ashbel V. Smith
Major Noble B. Judah, Jr C. O. 1st Battalion.
Major Curtis G. Redden C. O. 2nd Battalion.
Appendix I 287
Captain Jacob McG. Dickinson /
Captain Hugh R. Montgomery
Captain Iiring Odell
Major Josq)h £. Dowan Regimental Smrgeon.
150th field ARTIIXEBTy HEAYT
{Ut Indiana Field ArtiUery)
Colonel Robert H. lyndall Regimental Commander.
Lieut. Colonel Thomas S. Wilson
Major Guy A. Wainwright C. O. 1st Battalion.
Major Solon J. Carter C. O. ^d Battalion.
Major Marlin A. Prather C. O. 3rd Battalion.
Captain Daniel I. Glossbrenner Regimental Adjutant.
Major Frank C. Robinson Regimental Surgeoa.
1518T FIELD ARTILIXRT
{Ut Mmneeota Field ArtUlery)
Colonel George E. Leach Regimental Commander.
Lieut. Colonel William H. Donahue
Major John F. McDonald C. O. 1st Battalion.
Major Charles A. Green C. O. 3nd Battalion.
Captain Lewis C. Coleman
Captain Erwin H. Sherman
Ist Lieut. William J. Harrington Chaplain.
117th teench moetae batteet
(Coe, S and 4, Maryland Coast Artillery Corpe)
Captain Robert J. Gill Commanding OiBoer.
117th ekoiveee eegimekt
(Ut Bn., Ut Sep. Bn. 8. C. Bngineere)
(tnd Bn., Ut Sep. Bn. CaHf. Engineen)
Colonel William Kelly Regimental
Lieut Colonel Harold S. Hetrick
Major J. M. JohnKm C O. Ist Battalion.
238 The Story of the Rainbow Division
Major Jay A. Given CO. Snd Battalion.
(Captain Eliha Churdi Regimental Adjutant.
Lieut Colonel Harold S. Hetrick
Captain Albert Pike
117th evoikbie tkaut
(North Carolina)
Captain Richard D. Clowe Conunanding OfBcer*
117th axmustteok tiaik
(Kansas)
Lieut. Col. Frank L. Travis Train Conunander.
Captain William K. Herndon Adjutant.
Major George J. Frank C. O. Horsed Section.
Major Albert H. Herman C. O. Motor Section.
t
117th supply train
(Texas)
Major Albert E. Devine Train Commander.
1st Lieut. William E. Talbot Adjutant.
117th field battalion signal corps
Major Ruby D. Garrett Battalion Commander.
1st Lieut. Glenn O. Brown Adjutant.
117th train headquarters and military police
(Virginia Coast Artillery Corps)
Major R. E. Shannon Commanding Officer.
117TB SANITABY TBAUT
Captain Dunning S. Wilson ........... Director of Ambulances.
Appendios I 2S9
165tK AMBVLAVd OOXPAITT
(i#i AwJManc0 Camfamig, New Jerity)
Captain Peter P. Rafferty Commanding OiBcer.
160th ambttulkcb coxpavt
(J.9t AmbuUmee Companjf, Tmim§9900)
Captain Percy A. Perkins Commanding Oflioer.
167th AMBULAKd CJDXPAKT
{lit Ambutanee Company, Okldhama)
Captain Hector G. Lareau Commanding Ofltoer.
169th AMBITLAirCI OOKPANT
(Ut Anibulafifi0 Company, Miehiyan)
Captain Robert J. Baskeryllle Commanding OiBeer.
FIELD HOSPITAL SECTION
165th FBLD H08PITAI.
(1st Field HoepUal, Diet, of Colwmbia)
Major Herbert J. Bryson Conmianding Oflioer.
166th field hospital
(1st Field Hospital, Nebraska)
Ifajor John F. Spealman Commanding OiBcer.
167th fuld hospital
(Ut Field Hospital, Oregon)
Major James P. Graham Commanding OtBeer
•
240 The Story of the Rainboto DivUiou
168th field H08PITAI.
{Ut FUld Hospital, Colorado)
Major Bdward W. Lacell Commanding OiBoer.
APPENDIX II
ROSTER OF RAINBOW DIVISION OFFICERS
NOVEMBER 11, 1918
PERSONNEL OF RAINBOW DIVISION STAFF
Major General Charles T. Menoher. . . Division Commander
1st Lieut. F. W. Wulsin Aide de Camp
Colonel William N. Hugbes, Jr. ... Chief of Staff
Major Robert J. Gill A. C. of S., G-1
1st Lieut. Marcus L. Poteet Asst. to A. C. of S., G^l
Lieut. Col. Noble B. Judah A. C. of S., G-2
Major E. H. Bertram Asst to A. C. of S., G-3
Captain John A. Greene Asst. to A. C. of S., G-2
Lieut. Col. Grayson H, P. Murphy... A. C. of S'., G-3
Captain Roy S. Gault Asst. to A. C. of S., G-3
1st Lieut. S. Z. Orgle Asst. to A. C. of S., G-3
1st Lieut. Thurlow Brewer Asst. to A. C. of S., G-3
1st Lieut. P. E. Sunstrom Asst to A. C. of S., G-3
Lieut Col. Stanley M. Rumbough. ... Division Adjutant
Major James E. Thomas Act Division Adjutant
Captain Dennis J. Downey Statistical Officer
1st Lieut. William Bradford Asst. to Statistical Officer
1st Lieut Walter J. Curley Asst. to Statistical Officer
Major Albert D. Fetterman Division Inspector
Lieut. Col. Hugh W. Ogden Judge Advocate
Lieut. Col. George F. Graham Division Quartermaster
Major Marshall F. Sharp Asst. to Quartermaster
Captain C. A. Cordingly Asst. to Quartermaster
'Appendix II 241
Captain R. M. Overstreet Aast, to Quartermaster
Captain Paul W. Fechtman Asst. to Qaartermaster
Captain Edward McMurry Asst to Quartermaster
1st Lieut. John P. Clark A'ssL to Quartermaster
Ist Lieut. Fred. O. Klakring Asst. to Quartermaster
Ist Lieut. George Brown Asst. to Quartermaster
9nd Lieut Henry R. Black Asst to Quartermaster
Lieut CoL David S. Fairchild Division Surgeon
Captain A. J. Campbell Asst to Division Surgeon
Major Angus Mclvor Asst. to Division Surgeon
Major Aquila Mitchell Division Veterinarian
Captain R. A. Mead Remount Officer
Captain Lewis A. Platts Division Dental Surgeon
1st Lieut Wallace S. Murry Interpreter
ted Lieut. N. B. Adams Interpreter
Major John A. Wheeler Division Ord. Officer
Lieut CoL Ruby D. Garrett Division Signal Officer
Captain Charles H. Gorrill Division Gas Officer
Captain £. A. Wilcox Asst Division Gas Officer
1st Lieut. Chester M. Neff Asst. Division Gas Officer
Emory C Worthingtcm Asst Provost Marshal
Major Davis G. Arnold Zone Major
Captain Morton P. Lane Asst to Zone Major
Captain James E. Beriy Asst to Zone Major
Captain William Talbot Motor Transportation Officer
9nd Lieut. F. A. Danforth Topographical Officer
HEADQUARTERS TROOP
Captain Lee R. Caldwell Commanding
Ist Lieuv. Roy S. Miller
140th MACHiirx GUir battaxjoit
Major James H. Palmer Commanding
1st Lieut. Joseph R. Cravath Adjutant
242 The Story of the Rainbow Division
■
83rd infantry BRIGADE
150th machuste ouk battalion'
Captain Lothar G. Graef CommaDding
Colonel Heniy J. RelUy « Commanding
Major William T. Doyle Adjutant
165th IJSTFAJSmY BEOIMEITT
Lieut. CoL Charles A. Dravo Commanding
Major A. N. Anderson C. O. 1st Battalion
Major Michael Kelly C. O. 2nd Battalion
Major Thomas T. Reilly C. O. 3rd Battalion
166th IKFAHmiT REGIMEKT
Colonel Benson Hough Commanding
Lieut. CoL Bruce R. Campbell
Major James A. Samson C. O. 1st Battalion
Major George T: Geren C. O. ^d Battalion
Major Robert Haubrich C. O. 3rd Battalion
84th infantry BRIGADE
Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur . . . Commanding
1st Lieut. William N. Wright Aide-de-Camp
Major Walter B. Wolf Adjutant
1518T MACHINE GUN BATTALION
Major Cooper D. Winn Commanding
167th INFANTRY BEOIMENT
Colonel William P. Screws Conunanding
Lieut. Col. Walter E. Bare
Major Robert Joerg C. O. 1st Battalion
Major Ravec Norriss C. O. ^d Battalion
Capt£dn George A. Glenn C. O. 3rd Battalion
Appendix II 249
168tB UTFANimT ISOIXBjrT
Colonel Mathew A. Tinley Commanding
Lieut Col, Claude M. Stanley.
Major Lloyd D. Ross .....
Major Oriville B. Tates . . .
Major Charles J. Cassey . . .
C. O. 1st Battalion
C. O. ^d Battalicm
C. O. 3rd Battalion
67tr field artillery BRIGADE
Brigadier General George G. Gatley Commanding
Ist Lieut George Milton Aide-de-Camp
Captain James A. Holt Adjutant
140th nBLD AaenuxKt isoimekt
Lieut Col. Curtis G. Redden Commanding
Major Thomas S. Hammond C. O. 1st Battalion
Major nomas S. Redden C. O. 9nd Battalion
150th fisld artexxibt bbouckkt
Colonel Robert H. lyndall Commanding
Major Stanley S. MlUer C. O. 1st Battalion
Major William Spence C. O. 2nd Battalion
Major William Cureton C. O. 8rd Battalion
1518T nBLD AmSJLMXt BEOIMBITT
Colonel George E. Leach Commanding
Lieut CoL John H. McDonald
Major £. P. Schugg C. O. Ist Battalion
Major Thomas T. Handy C. O. 9nd Battalion
117th TIBKCH MOlTAa MLTOXt
Ist Lieut J. Woodall Greene Commanding
117th EKGIXUE BXGIMBVT
Colonel John M. Johnson Commandin
Lieut. CoL Wm. F. Johnson
Major Richard T. Smith
244 The, Story of the Rainboto DixHsiofi
117tb evqjxeem. tbaik
Ut Lfent I. L. Hines. . « Commanding
117th ▲xxmnnoK nAnr
Major George J. Frank Commanding
117tK 8UPPLT 3SAIK
Major A. E. Devine Commanding
117th flELD nOKAX. BATTALIOSr
Major Richard T. Smith Commanding
117tH TKALK HEADaTTAaTERS AKU MHJTABT POIICK
Colonel L. J. Fleming Commanding
117th SAirrrABT TRAnr
Major Wilbur S. Conkling Commanding
APPENDIX III
MOVEMENTS, MATERIAL CAPTURED. CASUAlr
TIES
HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION
AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES
16 December, 1918,
From: Commanding General, 49nd Division.
To: Commander-in-Chief, American Expeditionary Forces.
Subject: Report
In accordance with No. 1176, G-3, G.H.Q., American E. F.,
the following is submitted:
Appendix III
245
"A.
(1) Headqnarterg, i|fnd DiyiBion, arriyed in France Ist No-
yember, 1917.
(9) Successive locations of Division Headquarters since ar*
rival in France are as follows:
IK murci
Looation
St. Nazaire
Vaucouleurs
Laf auche
Rolampont
LuneviUe (Lorraine Sector)
Baccarat (Lorraine Sector)
Chatel-sur-Moselle
St Germain-la-Ville
Yadenay Farm (Champagne Sec-
tor)
La Ferte-sous-Jouarre (ChAteau-
Tliieny)
Arrived
L$ft
1
Nov., 17
6
Nov^ 17
8
Nov., 17
12
Dec, 17
U
Dec., 17
96
Dec, 17
96
Dec., 17
17
Feb., 18
17
Feb., 18
31
Mar., 18
31
Mar., 18
91
June^ 18
31
June, 18
99
June, 18
S»
June, 18
99
June, 18
99
June, 18
91
July, 18
31
July, 18
94
July, 18
Trugny (ChAteau-Tliierry Sector) '
Bear Echelon, La Ferte-sous-
^ouarre
. 94 July, 18 98 July, 18
Beuvardes (ChAteau-Thierry Sec-
tor) y 98 July, 18 19 Aug., 18
*Rear Echelon, Trugny
La Fert^-sous-Jouarre (ChAteau-
Thlerry) 19 Aug., 18
Bourmont 17 Aug., 18
Chatenois 30 Aug., 18
Colombey-les-Belles 5 Sep., 18
Toul .'. . . 8 Sep., 18
* Moved to Beuvardes August 4, 1918.
17 Aug., 18
30 Aug., 18
5 Sep., 18
8 Sep., 18
9 Sep., 18
?.
246 The Story of the Bainboto Diviaion
Loeatton Arrind Ltft
Ansattyine (St Mihiel Sector) • • \ - o„ ,„ i* ««, ,-
Rew EebdoD. Bruley ...../ * *«?•.»» » S<^, 18
Benoite-Vaux-CouTCDt •: 1 Oct» 18 4 Oct., 18
Redcourt 4 Oct» 18 6 Oct, 18
Rear Echelon, Redcourt j '* '
C3iepp7 (Argonne Sector) 11 Oct., 18 19 Oct, 18
Camp Drachen (Argonne Sector) 1 jp oct, 18 S Noy., 18
Rear Echelon, Recicourt j
OiampigDeuUea (Argonne Sector) 1 ^ ^^ ^ ^^
Rear Echelon, Recicourt J
Autmche (Argonne Sector) ••••ij.vr -lo nv iq
Rear Echelon, Recicourt '^ ** **
}
Grandes Armoises (Argonne Sec-'
tor) \ 6 Nov., 18 7 Nov., 18
Rear Echelon, Recicourt
Maisoncelle (Argonne Sector) ,,,\ -vt ,o f«vT lo
^ „,,^^._^ -^ >7 Nov., IB 10 Nov., 18
Rear Echelon, Recicourt J
Buzancy 10 Nov., 18 14 Nov., 18
Landreville 14 Nov., 19 16 Nov., 18
Brand^viUe 16 Nov., 19 20 Nov., 18
Montm^dy 20 Nov., 19 21 Nov., 18
Appendice III
247
nr SBLOivic
LoeaUtm Arrived
Ylrton «1 Not., 18
ArioB 99 NoY., 18
nr Luxiiauia
Mendb 88 Nor., 18
Consdorf 9 Dec, 18
Wdschbillig 8 Dec, 18
6peicher ; 6 Dec 18
Birresbom 6 Dec., 18
l>Tti8 8 Dec., 18
Adenau 9 Dec., 18
Ahrweiler 15 Dec, 18
L§ft
Not., 1§
Not., 18
f Dec 18
S Dec, 18
5 Dec., 18
6 Dec., 18
8 Dec, 18
9 Dec, 18
15 Dec, 18
B.
Baoeanit, Lorraine.
FtaM. de Vadenay,
Champagne.
Tmgnar and Beau-
▼aitxt,Mame.
AnMunriUe. Eaiey
and Boil de
Pannee, Woevie.
Chappf and 00^
TOif, N. B. oT
AptemonU Ar-
-Meoae.
Aotmebe. Grandee
Armoieee and
Maieoneellee,
Sector
Dombaale, LnneviOe. St.
Clement, Baccarat
(Under 8th French
Army and 7th French
Army Corps).
Baccarat.
Souain and Biperanoe
(td^ and intermediate
poaitioni).
Front of let U. 8. A. C.
(Onrcq).
Anaauville, in center of
4th U. S. A. C. Then
Eaiey and Pannes.
Left of 5th A. C. (South
of St. GeoifM — ^Lan-
dret-et-St. George*—
CoU de ChatiUon).
Left of lit A. C. GSooth
of Sedan).
Date of
Entry
tl Feb« 18
81 Mar., 18
6 July, 18
U July, 18
IC Sept., 18
Aetiw
or Quiet
Quiet
Semi-MtSre
Active
Active
Active
Date of
Withdrawal
« Mar.. 18
17 June, 18
tl July, 18
S Aug.. 18
80 Sept. 18
18 Oct.. 18 Aetifo 81 Oet. 18
5 Not.. 18 AflUrt 10 Nor. 18
248 The Story of the Rainbow Division
c.
The 67tfa Field ArtUleiy Brigade was with the diyision at all
times that the division was in the front line. In addition, the
67th Field Artillery Brigade served the following tours of dutj»
supporting front line divisions:
With the 4th Division ftrom August 3, 1918, to August 11,
1918, during which time the 4th Division advanced from north
of the Forfit de Ndsles to the Vesle River;
With the S^d Division from October 7, 1918, to October 1^
1918, assisting in an attack on the Kriemhilde Stellung;
With the Snd Division from November 1, 1918, to November
9, 1918, delivering preparation and barrage fire for the attack of
November 1, 1918, in front of St. Georges-Landres-et-St Georges.
The following American artillery units have also served with the
4^d Division during its periods in the front lines:
Chdteau-Thierry operation
51st Field Artillery Brigade, from July 95, 1918, to August
S, 1918.
8t, Mihiel salient operation:
18th Field Artillery Regiment and 10th Field Artillery Regiment,
on September 12-13, 1918.
Meuse-A rgonne operation :
1st Field Artillery Brigade, from October 13, 1918, to October
81, 1918.
D.
PRISONERS CAPTURED BY THE RAINBOW DIVISION
Offlcen
Baccarat Sector 0
ChAteau-Thierry Operation (Ourcq) 0
St. Mihiel Salient Operation 8
Argonne-Meuse Operation, 13-31 October,
1918 6 005 til
Argonne-Meuse Opemtion, 5-10 Novem-
ber, 1918 0 U 35
Totals 14 1^ 1^
Men
Total
13
13
09
69
981
989
Appendia^ III 249
E.
MATERIAL CAPTURED BY THE RAINBOW DIVISION
Heavy Light Trench Machine
Art, Art, Mortars Oune Bifiee
ChAteau-Thierry Operar
tion (Ourcq)
• •
• •
15
155
St. Mihiel Salient Op-
eration
9
13
6
800
Argonne-Meuse Opera-
tion, 13-81 October,
1918
• •
1
4
90
Argonne-Mense Oi>era-
tion, 5-10 November,
1918
• •
f
0
96
Totals
9
Itf
95
470
9,000
9,000
F.
TOTAL CASUALTIES OF THE RAINBOW DIVISION TO
DATE
Enliited
Oncers Men,
Killed 56 1,913
Died from wounds 99 449
Severely wounded 79 2,061
Slightly wounded 194 5,033
Gassed 90 9,563
Missing 0 979
Prisoners 8 41
Totals 881 19,389
250 The Story of the Rainbow DwUUm
o.
TOTAL DEPTH OP ADVANCE MADE BY RAINBOW DI-
VISION IN EACH OPPENSIVB ACTION
KUomet&rf
Adcanced
ChAtean-Thieny Operation 17
St Mihiel Salient Operation 19
Argonne-Meuse Operation, 13-31 October, 1918 ... 9
Argonne-Meuse Operation, 5-10 November, 1918 ... 19
Total 57
APPENDIX IV
CITATIONS AND COMMENDATIONS
6th Army Corps
SUif, H. Q., June 15, 1918.
1st Bureau,
No. 3243-1
GENERAL ORDERS NO. 50
At the moment when the 4?nd U. S. Infantry Division is leav-
ing the Lorraine front, the Commanding General of the 6th Army
Corps desires to do homage to the fine military qualities which
it has continuously exhibited, and to the services which it has ren-
dered in the Baccarat sector.
The oifensive ardor, the sense for the ultilizations and the or-
ganizations of terrain as for the liaison of the arms, the spirit
of method, the discipline shown by all its officers and men, the
inspirations animating them, prove that at the first call, they can
henceforth take a glorious place in the new line of battle.
The Commanding General of the 6th Army Corps expresses his
deepest gratitude to the 42nd Division for its precious collabora-
tion; he particularly thanks the distinguished Commander of this
Appendix IV 251
Division, General Menoheb, the Officers under his orders and his
Staif so brilliantly directed by Colonel MacArthur.
It is with a sincere regret that the entire 6th Army Corps sees
the 49nd Division depart. But the bonds of affectionate com-
radeship which have been formed here will not be broken, for us,
in faithful memory, are united the living and the dead of the
Rainbow Division, those who are leaving for hard combats and
those who, after having nobly sacrificed their lives on tlie land
of the East, now rest there, guarded over piously by France.
These sentiments of warm esteem will be still more deeply af-
firmed during the impending struggles where the fate of Free
Peoples is to be decided.
May our units, side by side, contribute valiantly to the triumph
of Justice and of Right.
General Duport,
Commanding the 6th Army Corps.
( Signed ) Duport.
HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION
AMERICAN EXPEDinONART FORCES
17 July, 1918.
Memorandum :
The following letter received Is furnished Brigade, Regimental
and Separate Unit Commanders for publication to their respec-
tive commands:
4th Army,
21st Army Corps, H. Q., July 15th, 1918.
Staff,
1st Bureau,
No. 4343/1
From General Naulin,
Commanding 21st Army Corps.
To 13th, 43d, 170th Inf. Divs., 42nd U. S. Inf.
Div., and Artillery.
General Gouraud this evening expressed his high satisfaction
with the success attained by the 2l8t Army Corps during the
stem but glorious day of July 15th.
252 The Story of the Rainbow Division
Kindly transmit to tlie units under your command tlie sincere
congratulations of the Commanding General of the Army, and
my own personal gratitude for the admirable tenacity of the
dlst Army Corps and all the elements attached to it on this oc-
casion.
Hie German has clearly broken his sword on our lines. What-
ever he may do in the future, he shall not pass.
(Signed) S, NAULnr.
By command of Major General Menoher:
Douglas MacAbthxts,
Brigadier General, General Staffs
Chief of Staff.
Official:
Walter £. Powebs,
Major, N. G., Adjutant General,
Division Adjutant
HEADQUARTERS, 43»d DIVISION
ABCERICAN EXPEDITIONABT FORCES
17 July, 1918. •
Memorandum :
The following letter received is furnished Brigade, Regimental
and Separate Unit Commanders for publication to their respec-
tive commands:
4th Army,
Staif, Army H.Q., July 16, 1918.
3rd Bureau,
No. 6954/3
soldiers of the 4th army
During the day of July 15th, you broke the effort of 15 Ger-
man Divisions supported by 10 others.
They were expected, according to their orders, to reach the
Marnc in the evening. You stopped their advance clearly at the
point where we desired to engage in and win the battle.
Appendix IV 258
Yon hare the right to be proud, heroic infantrjrmen and ma-
chine gunners of the advance posts who signaled the attack and
disintegrated it, aviators who flew over it, battalions and bat-
teries which brolce it, staffs which so minutely prepared the bat-
tlefield.
It is a hard blow for the enemy. It Is a beautiful day for
France.
I count on you that it may always be the same, every time he
dares to attaclc you, and witii all my heart of a soldier, I thank
you. GOURAUD.
HEADQUARTERS, 49ifD DIVISION
AMEaiCAK BXPEDinOVAaT FORCES
18 July, 1918.
Mbmorakdvm t
The following letter received is furnished Brigade, Regimental
and Separate Unit Commanders for publication to their respec*
tive commands:
91st Army Corps,
170th Division, July 17, 1918.
Staff,
3rd Bureau,
No. 1517/3
General Bebxhaio, commanding par interum the 170th Divi«
sion. — ^To the Commanding General of the 49nd, U. S. Infantry
Division.
The Commanding General of the 170th Infantry Division de-
sires to express to the Commanding General of the 42nd U. S.
Infantry Division his keen admiration for the courage and bravery
of which the American Battalions of the 83rd Brigade have given
proof in the course of the hard fighting of the 15th and 16th of
July, 1918, as also for the effectiveness of the artillery fire of
the 49Dd U. S. Infantry Division.
In these two days the troops of the United States, by thelt
tenacity, largely aided their French comrades in breaking the
repeated assaults of the 7th Reserve Division, the 1st Infantxy
254 The Story of the Rainbow Dtciaion
Dimion and the Dismomited Guard Dmskm of ftm
these Utter two dlfisioiis are among tiie best of Gcnnany.
According to the orders captured on tiie German officers made
prisoner, their staff wished to take CUUons-siir-Mame on the
erening of JuJy 16, but it had redumed witfaoiit the Talor of tlte
American and French combatants who XxAd them witii machine
gun, rifle and cannon, that thej woold not pass.
The Commanding General of the 170th Infantry Diridon is
therefore particidarly prood to obserre tiiat in mingling their
blood f^oriously on the Battlefield of Champagne, the Ameri-
cans and the French of todaj are continuing the magnificent tra<-
ditions e^itablished a century and a half ago by Washington and
l^Fayette; it is with this sentiment that he salutes the Noble
Flag of the United States in thinking of the final Victory.
HEADQUARTERS, 42kd DIVISION
AXEBICAir EXFEUlTiOirAKT FOaCZS
90 July, 1918.
Memorandum No. 242.
'Hie following order of the 21st Army Corps is published for
the infornintion of all concerned.
21st Arniy Corps,
Staff, H. Q., July 19, 1918.
.'Jrd Bureau,
No. 2,595/3.
GENERAL ORDER
At the moment when the 42nd American Division is on the
point of leaving the 21st Army Corps, I desire to express my
keen satisfaction and my sincere thanks for the services which it
has rendered under all conditions.
By its valor, ardor and its spirit, it has very particularly dis-
tinguished itself on July 15 and 16 in the course of the great
battle where the 4th Army broke the German offensive on the
ChaH)j)«gne front.
1 am ]>roud to have had it under my orders during this period;
Appendix IV 265
my prajers accompany it in the great struggle engaged in for the
liberty of the World.
Commanding the 31st Army Corps.
OflMal:
The Chief of Steff.
(Signed)
By command of Major General Menoher:
Douglas MacAbthttb,
Brigadier General, General Staff,
Chief of Stoff.
Walter £. Powebs,
Major, N. G., Adjutant General,
Division Adjutant
6th Army, P. C, 28 July, 1918.
Chief of SUff,
3rd Bureau,
No. 9,983.
If on
The Prestoent of the Repubuc, in the course of a visit to the
Cth Army, expressed his satisfaction over the results obtained, as
well as for the qualities of valor and perseverance manifested.
The Commanding General of the 6th Army is happy to transmit
to the troops of his army the felicitations of the PassmEirr of
THE REPUBUa
(Signed) Gexeeal Degoutie..
• • • • •
6th Army, P. C, 26 July, 1918.
Chief of SUff,
3rd Bureau,
Na 2,284/3
vonE
The Commanding CSeneral of the 6th Army brings to the no-
tice of all troops of the Army the following resolubon voted by
the Mayors of the Arrondissement of Meaux on the 20th of July,
1918:
256 The Story of the Rainbow Divmon
The Mayors of the Arrondissement of Meaux, meeting on the
20th of July, 1918, are happy to hail the splendid victory of the
6th Army, which has at the time of the battle of the Marne^
saved their communes from the invasion which menaced them.
Convey to the valiant troops of the 6th Army the sincere ex-
pression of their gratitude and their admiration.
The President of the Congress of Mayors,
(Signed) G. Ruoel,
Mayor of Meanx,
Deputy of Seine-et-Mame.
TTie Commanding General of the 6th Army is happy to com-
municate these felicitations to the troops of his army.
(Signed) General Degouttb.
HEADQUARTERS, 49nd DIVISION
AMERICAN EXPEDinONART FORCES
31 July, 1918.
Memorandum No. 246.
The following Jitter received is furnished Brigade, Regimental
and Separate Unit Commanders for publication to their respec-
tive commands.
headquarters first army corps
July 28th, 1918.
from: Commanding General, 1st Army Corps, Am. E. F.
To: Commanding General, 42nd Division, Am. E. F.
Subject: Congratulations.
1. ITie return of the 42nd Division to the 1st Army Corps was
a matter of self -congratulation for the Corps commander, not only
because of previous relations with the Division, but also because
of the crisis which existed at the time of its arrival.
2. The standard of efficient performance of duty which is domi-
nated by the Commander-in-Chief, Am. E. F., is a high one,
involving as it does on an occasion such as the present complete
self-sacrifice on the part of the entire personnel, and a willing-
ness to accfpt cheerfully every demand even to the limit of en-
durance of the individual for the sake of the Cause for which
we are in France.
Appendix IV 257
S. Ttit taking over of the front of the 1st Army Corps under
the conditions of relief and advance, together with the attendant
difficulty incident to widening the front was in itself no small
undertaking, and there is added to this your advance in the face
of the enemy to a depth of five or more kilometers, all under
cover of darkness, to the objective laid down by higher authority
to be attained, which objective you are holding, regardless of the
efforts of the enemy to dislodge you. Hie Corps Commander is
pleased to inform you that the 4^d Division has fully measured
up to the high standard above referred to, and he reiterates his
self-congratulation that you and your organization are again a
part of the 1st Army Corps, Am. E. F.
(Signed) H. Liooett,
Major General, U. S. A.
By command of Major General Menoher:
Douglas MAcARTHxm,
Brigadier General, General Staff,
Chief of Staff.
Official:
Waliee £. POWEBS,
Major, N. G., Adjutant General,
Division Adjutant.
HEADQUARTERS, 42kd DIVISION
AMERICAjr EXPEDinOVABT F01CE8
6 August, 1918.
Memoeakdum No. S58.
II. The following General Order is furnished Brigade, Regi-
mental and Separate Battalion Commanders for publication to
their respective organisations:
G. A. R.,
Etat Major, H. Q., August 4th, 1918.
3rd Bureau,
No. 4,190.
OEVBBAL OBDEB
The second battle of the Mame ends, like the first in a victory.
The ChAteau-Thierry pocket exists no more.
258 The Story of the Rainbow Division
llie Vlth and Xth Annies^ also the allied troops fighting at
their side, have taken a glorious part in the battle.
Their swift and powerful entrance in the battle^ on July 18th,
had, as a first result, to entirely break up the offensive of the
enemy, and compelled him to retreat across the Marxe.
Since that time, owing to our strong attacks, and chased night
and day, without stop, he has been forced to fall back across the
Vesle, leaving in our hands 95,000 prisoners, 600 guns, 4,000 ma-
chine guns, 500 minenwerfers.
We owe these results to the energy and skill of the Chiefs, and
to the extraordinary valor of the troops, who, for more than 15
days, had to march and fight without rest.
I am sending to the Commanders of the Xth and Vlth Armies,
Generals Manoin and Deooutte, to the Commanders of the Brit-
ish and American units, and to all the troops, the token of my
admiration for their knowledge, their courage, their heroic tenacity.
They may all be proud of the work accomplished. It is great
because it has greatly contributed to secure the final victory for
us, and to bring it much nearer.
(Signed) Fatolle.
Offlcial: The Chief of Staff:
(Signed) PAauETTE.
HEADQUARTERS, 42nd DIVISION
AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES
13 August, 1918.
Memorandum No. 261.
The following General Order, 6th (French) Army, is published
to this Command:
6th Army P. C, 9 August, 1918.
GENERAL ORDER
Before the great offensive of the 18th of July, the American
Troops forming part of the 6th French Army distinguished them-
selves in capturing from the enemy the Bois de la Brigade de
Marine and the village of Vaux, in stopping his offensive on the
Marne and at Fossoy.
Appendix IV 259
Since then, they have taken the most glorious part in a second
battle of the Marne, rivaling in order and in vallance the French
troops. They have in twenty days of incessant combat, liber-
ated nmnerous French villages and realized across a difficult coun-
try an advance of forty kilometers which has carried them be-
yond the V^le.
Their glorious marches are marked by names which will illus-
trate in the future the military history of the United States.
Torcy-Belleau, Plateau d*£tsepiixt, Epiedb, La Chasmsi,
L'OuRCQ, Sekikges-bt-Nesles, Sebgt, La Vesle and Fishes.
The new divisions who were under fire for the first time showed
themselves worthy of the war-time traditions of the Regular Army.
They have had the same ardent desire to fight the Boche, the
same discipline by which an order given by the Chief is always
executed, whatever be the difficulties to overcome and the sacri-
fices to undergo.
The magnificent result so obtained are due to the energy and
skill of the Chiefs, and to the bravery of the soldiers.
I am proud to have commanded such troops.
The General Commanding the 6th Army,
Degouth.
HEADQUARTERS, 42kd DIVISION
AMEBICAN BXPEDITIOVABT FORCES, nUKCE
13 August, 1918.
To THE Officers axd Men of the 43in> Division:
A year has elapsed since the formation of your organization.
It is, therefore, fitting to consider what you have accomplished
as a combat division and what you should prepare to accom-
plish in the future.
Your first elements entered the trenches in Lorraine on Feb-
ruary 21st; you served on that front for 110 days. You were
the first American Division to hold a divisional sector and when
you left the sector June 21st, you had served continuously as a
division in the trenches for a longer time than any other Ameri-
260 The Story of the Rainbow Division
can Division. Although you entered the sector without experi-
ence in actual warfare, you so conducted yourselves as to win the
respect and affection of the French veterans with whom yoa
served. Under gas bombardment, in raids, in patrols, in the heat
of hand to hand combat and in the long dull hours of trench
routine so trying to a soldier's spirit, you bore yourselves in a
manner worthy of the traditions of our country.
You were withdrawn from Lobbaike and moved immediately to
the Champagke front where during the critical days from July
14th to July 18th, you had the honor of being the only American
Division to fight in General Gouraud's Army which so gloriously
obeyed his order, "We will stand or die," and by its iron defense
crushed the German assault and made possible the offensive of
July 18th to the west of Reims.
From Champagne you were called to take part in exploiting
the success north of the Marxe. Fresh from the battle front
before ChIloks, you were thrown against the picked troops of
Germany. For eight consecutive days, you attacked skillfully
prepared positions. You captured great stores of arms and
munitions, you forced the crossings of the Ourcq. You took
Hill 212, Serge, Meurcy Ferme and Scringes by assault. You
drove the enemy, including an Imperial Guard Division, before
you for a depth of fifteen kilometers. When your infantry was
relieved, it was in full pursuit of the retreating Germans, and
your artillery continued to progress and support another Ameri-
can Division in the advance to the Vesle.
For your services in Lorraike, your Division was formerly
commended in General Orders by the French Army Corps under
which you served. For your services in Champagne, your as-
sembled officers received the personal thanks and commendation
of General Gouraud himself. For your services on the Ourcq,
your Division was officially complimented in a letter from the
Commanding General, 1st Army Corps, of July 28th, 1918.
To your success, all ranks and all services have contributed,
and I desire to express to every man in the command my ap-
preciation of his devoted and courageous effort.
Appendix IV 261
However, our position places a burden of responsibility upon
us which we must strive to bear steadily forward without fal-
tering. To our comrades who have fallen, we owe the sacred obli-
gation of maintaining the reputation which they died to estab-
lish. The influence of our performance on our allies and on our
enemies cannot be overestimated for we were one of the first
divisions sent from our country to show the world that Americans,
can fight.
Hard battles and long campaigns lie before us. Only by
ceaseless vigilance and tireless preparation can we fit ourselves
for them. I urge you, therefore, to approach the future with
confidence but above all with firm determination that so far as
it is in your power, to spare no effort whether in training or in
combat to maintain the record of our division and the honor of
our country.
Chauxs T. Mbkoheb,
Major General, U. S. A.,
Commanding.
HEADQUARTERS FOURTH ARMY CORPS
\MEEICAK EZPEDmOKAET F01CE8, imAKCE
QBVBEAL OBDEE NO. 5
13 September, 1918.
1. The Fourth Corps has defeated the enemy and driven him
tmck on the whole Corps Front All objectives were reached be-
/ore the time prescribed in orders, a large number of prisoners
and a considerable amount of booty captured. The rapid advance
of the Corps, in conjunction with the action of the other ele-
ments of the First Army, rendered the St. Mihiel salient unten-
able to the enemy, who has retreated.
9. The greatest obstacles to the advance was thought to be the
enemy wire which presented a problem that caused anxiety to all
concerned. The Corps Commander desires to express in particu-
lar his admiration of the skill shown by the small groups in the
advance battalions and their commanders in crossing the hostile
wire, in general to express his appreciation of the high spirit and
262 The Story of the Bmvbmo Dioiskm
darfaig riidim by tibe tsoopa, and the rmf^fj and dMcncy
which the operatUm was oondacted.
By command of Majcb Gunouii Dicxxav:
Chief of StmfL
OjfMd:
Major, Infantiy»
Adjutant
HEADQUARTERS 4fH ARMY CORPS
15 Septemb»> 191B.
fflBunAi. oaonVo. 7
The Corps Commander is pleased to transmit to the coimnand
the foHowing telegram received 1^ the Commander-in-CMef :
"My dear General The First American Army under your
command on the first day has won a magnificent lictory by a
maneuver as skillfully prepared as it was valiantly acted. I ex-
tend to you as well as to the officers and to the troops under your
command my warmest compliments.
'*Mabshal Foch."
HEADQUARTERS 4th ARMY CORPS
September 17, 1918.
GEKEBAL ORDEBS KO. 8
The Corps Commander takes great pride in repeating the fol-
lowing telegram received by him from the Conmiander-in-Chief
of the American Expeditionary Forces:
"Please accept my sincere congratulations on the successful and
important part taken by the officers and men of the IV Corps
in the first offensive of the First American Army on September
12th and 13th, 1918. The courageous dash and vigor of out
troops has thrilled our countrymen and evoked the enthusiasm of
Sri
^ai^«_.,..^i«.
Appendix IF 268
oar Allies. Please convey to your command my heartfelt ap-
preciation of their splendid work. I am proud of you all.
•^PEMHnro."
•"jnEMHnro."
By command of Major General Dickman.
ji ji jL jL
HEADQUARTERS, 49nd DIVISION
AMERICAK BXPEDinOKABT F0BCE8, FEAXCE
November 11, 1918.
To THE OfFICEBS AND MeN OF THE 49kD DIVISION:
On the 13th of August I addressed to you a letter summaris-
ing the record of your achievements in Lobraike, before Chalons
and on the Ourcq. On the occasion of my leaving the Division,
I wish to recall to you your services since that time and to ex-
press to you my appreciation of the unfailing spirit of courage
and cheerfulness with which you have met and overcome the diffi-
cult tasks which have confronted you.
After leaving the region of Ch&teau-Thierry you had scarcely
been assembled in your new area when you were ordered to ad-
vance by hard night marches to participate in the attack of the
St. Mihiel Salient. In this first great operation of the Ameri-
can Army, you were instructed to deliver the main blow in the
direction of the heights overlooking the Madine River, the cen-
ter of the Fourth Army Corps. In the battle that followed you
took every objective in twenty-eight hours. You pushed forward
advance elements five kilometers further, or nineteen kilometers
beyond your original starting point. You took more than one
thousand prisoners from nine enemy Divisions.
Worn though you were by ceaseless campaigning since Feb-
ruary, you then moved to the Vebdvn region to participate in the
great blow which your country's armies have struck west of the
Meuse. You took Hill 988, La Tuilerie Farm and the C6t6 de
Chatillon and broke squarely across the powerful KriemhUde
Stellung, clearing the way for the advance beyond St. George
and Landres et St. George. Marching and fighting day and night
you thrust through the advancing lines of the forward troops of
SM The Story of the Bainbow lAvi^m*
flw Fint Anuf. Too drove the enemr moon the Medbe. Yon
o^tared Ok fadgbt* doaatnatliig Uw iItr before Sedan and
reached in the etuaif Ums Qiefcitheft point attained by od^
Aatntewa troops.
Siaee Sqltmber IM^ ^on have taken orer twelve hundred
priMONS) yim l>a** fieed twen^-ATe French villages; jou have
recovered over one hnndred and flftjr aqnaie Ubmeters of French
tenttMj and fon bare eaptnred great nippUcB of enemy muni-
Whatever maj ccme In tbe fntnn, Qie men of this DlTision
.will have the prand conacfonaKBi (bat thcf hate thus far fought
wherever the Anmican flag haa flown ntort ^liously in this war-
In the deteiminfng battle hefoie CwXuxn, in the bloody drive
t«n CUlteati-TUai7 to the Vcde, In the blotting out of tbe St
IBUel Salient and in the adrance to Snuur yOu have played a
q^endid and leatUng part.
I know that yon wili glre Vat same nnfaOing support to who-
ever nu7 Booceed roe as' year commander, and that you will con-
tlnne to beaC forward wlthont faltering the colors of the Itaui-
sow Divmoir. I leave yon Mth deep and affectionate rqiret, and
I thank you again for yonr loyalty to me and your servlcei to
yonr country. You have struck a vital blow in the greatest war
ii^ history. You have proved to the world in no mean measure
that our conntiy can defend its own.
CoAaus T. Memohib,
Major General, U. S. A.,
Commanding
3 2044 021 665 906
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